Houseflies
by damn expensive eggs
Summary: Clyde still has yet to get used to living with Craig. Craig still has yet to get used to crawling jellybeans, Clyde's new Facebook addiction, food philosophy, Tom Jones, and more recently, "bro hugs." pairings no longer really a thing. i'm writing this on the side with original characters, but i'll update the south park version for the next billion years. thanks for reading!
1. the philosophy of cheeseburgers

**A/N**: Well, hi, there. I'm gonna try not to ramble too much because this fic is already a bunch of rambling. Argh. And that summary sucks. I'll change it later...

Okay, um, so, this is a multichapter. Bad move on my part. XD I didn't really think I needed any more, what with all the ones I haven't updated. Well, here I am, doing it again.

I started this on Valentine's Day, though I had thought of the title before then. What had happened was, I just wanted to call something Houseflies. I didn't know what it would be at all. No ideas. Just the title. Then, on V-Day, I visited my dad's friend's house. My dad's friend is one of the few equivalents to Clyde I have in my life - only, he's the oldest. He lives alone and he spends a lot of time on Facebook, watching Blu-Ray DVDs and, with the stories my dad tells of him, he's a Clyde. So, I just imagined Clyde living in an apartment like his, but he couldn't really live without Craig. Which sounds pretty gay, considering this is NOT a Cryde, but I love them as roommates like homygod you don't even know. It's not a new idea, for them to be rooming, but I needed something to get this Craig-and-Clyde crack off my chest. Well, it's not necessarily crack. There's canon in this, if you squint. You know I always try to stick to what makes sense. EXCEPT FOR ONE IMPORTANT THING.

The Facebook thing... like I said, I started this on V-Day, which is much before You Have 0 Friends existed. So, now I had to work around that universe. Um. Let's just say I completely eliminated it. No memories or anything of that happening. It really makes no sense, almost, because this clearly takes place in 2010. So, welcome to the world of Houseflies, it's totally fucked up! :D

This is just a slice of life introduction. Not that the rest of it won't be slice-of-lifey, I did want this to have a home-y feeling, that a bunch of us could relate to. Plot comes next chapter. And if not, the chapter after that. The last line of the fic should imply plot. XD Even if it doesn't. You'll know.

Anyway, CREEK AND STOLOVAN, ALL IN ONE. PARTY TIME. Okay, okay, that was rambly anyway. Whoops. Well, enjoy, and I'd marry you if you contributed some feedback in a review! Thanks! :3

_By the way, if you know where the whole "What's New, Pussycat" on repeat thing comes from, marry me._

* * *

**i.** **the philosophy of cheeseburgers**

_**Clyde Donovan **__just got a facebook! :D_

Basic Information

_**Sex**__: Male  
__**Birthday**__: April 10th  
__**Hometown: **__South Park, CO  
__**Relationship Status**__: Single  
__**Looking for: **__Friendship  
__**Political Views: **__i don't even know  
__**Religious Views: **__Catholic... i think_

_Personal Information_

_**Activities**__: playing PS3, PSP, xbox, chillin with my playboy mags  
__**Interests**__: again... playing PS3, PSP, xbox, chillin with my playboy mags... and eating mexican food :)  
__**Favorite Music**_: _cobra starship, gorillaz, bloodhound gang, lady gaga  
__**Favorite TV Shows**__: terrance & phillip forever  
__**Favorite Movies**_: _asses of fire, lord of the rings, harold & kumar go to white castle, ghostbusters  
__**Favorite Books**__: umm... i don't read books  
__**Favorite Quotations**__: "principles, like my biceps, are muy bonito." -juandissimo, fairly oddparents  
"it's clobberin' time!" -the thing, fantastic 4  
_"_son of a building block, it's woody!" -mr. potato head, toy story  
"nobody tosses a dwarf." -gimli, lord of the rings  
__**About Me**__: voted number 1 cutest boy in my 4th grade class. :) _

Clyde ceased his typing for a moment. He was just about to fill out the 'contact information' section, when he heard a sound of rapid brushing, gradually getting louder and louder as it approached from behind. Soon enough, the brushing was at maximum volume as it leaned over and brushed straight into his ear, gazing at the bright computer screen.

Toothpaste foaming at the mouth, Craig spoke through the bubbles and abundantly minty taste. "You joined Facebook?"

Clyde cracked his knuckles and stretched out his arms, reclining back in his chair. Keeping his eyes on the screen, he simply responded, "Yup."

Craig was brushing his upper canines almost violently, though his brushing sequence slowed down as he popped the toothbrush out of his mouth. White foam flung into Clyde's hair, unbeknownst to either of them. "You know," Craig said, smacking his lips, "you're like two years late." He swung his toothbrush as he spoke as if to conduct the sound of his speech. He stuck his toothbrush back in his mouth and continued to brush his tongue lazily. He slightly gagged and spat what was left of his toothpaste into Clyde's drink, which was a radioactive green and could easily be mistaken for some sort of spearmint mouthwash or a fourth grader's science experiment. Now with the bluish-white foam sitting at the top, it was beginning to look like the latter. Clyde didn't notice.

"I know," Clyde said. "But it seems like all the _social gatherings_," he wiggled his fingers, "are planned through Facebook."

Craig's eyes scanned the screen, analyzing everything that Clyde decided was okay to put in his Facebook profile. "Is your profile designed specially so you don't get laid, ever?"

Clyde frowned. Craig decided that he kind of looked like a sad clown when he did that. It just looked weird.

Craig spat the final amount of toothpaste into Clyde's drink again. "Have fun," he plainly said, as he walked back to the bathroom in his bare feet to continue his Monday morning routine.

Clyde needed to begin getting ready for work, too, because he was sure that lounging around in an old Led Zeppelin shirt ridden with tears and holes with dirty sweatpants to match (or, as he called them, his "pajayjays"), wasn't earning him a paycheck. He saved his final profile information and turned around to call back to Craig in genuine amazement, "Dude! It _knows_ who I _know_!" He reached for his nuclear drink, Gatorade, a flavor called "lime rain," and took a sip. He coughed.

Craig and Clyde were roommates. Manly men living together, doing manly man things like not decorating their house because only chicks liked having their houses pretty. Their apartment had white walls and a brownish couch and one round table with two folding chairs, and their kitchen was more like a closet with a fridge and a dysfunctional stove inside of it. The right fridge door was masculinized with magnets of political jokes regarding George W. Bush, and the left side was made over with hundreds of small word magnets, forming intelligent sentences like, "thyself world high of peanut is year," and, "my chicken frequently kiss crayons way."

Craig was satisfied sleeping on the pull-out couch while Clyde occupied the apartment's only bedroom. The walls of the bedroom were white as well, although there was a single poster above Clyde's bed, that was arguably Craig's only contribution to the apartment's décor (or lack thereof). A poster that displayed a paragraph written about the most functional word in the English language, "shit." "Shit" is printed exactly forty-six times on the poster. If it weren't for the word "shit," Craig would rather speak any other language than English. Clyde often thought about how he may like to have his childhood poster hanging up on the wall - it was a picture of some hot android chick, name and origin unknown, and Clyde adored it with every bone in his body. Craig saw the poster, eleven years ago, and bluntly stated, "_That is so not going in our future apartment_." And alas, the poster never did make it to their present apartment.

_The bastard had planned this all along... _

Besides the poster, there was one small television atop a dresser and the closet doors were mirrors; there was also a short nightstand that only served a purpose for the lamp that was worth like ten bucks. It was sufficient. They lived in a place that could only be described as sufficient. And manly. The shower curtain with brightly colored fishes and bubbles printed on it was irrelevant. (Clyde thought it was cute. And it was half price. How could anyone argue with that?)

Now that Clyde had caught a glimpse of the time, he was introduced to the first con of having a Facebook account: it's time consuming.

He rushed down their relatively short hall and burst through the bathroom door to retrieve combs, manly hand lotion and other toiletries, but was cut off with a "_Dude_, taking a _piss_ here—!" which was followed by Clyde's nervous and frantic, "Sorry, sorry!" and closed the door again.

He was still getting used to the whole roommate thing.

_Breakfast!_ Clyde recalled, _that's another thing you can do in the morning! _

Another thing about living in the Tucker-Donovan household was that no one cooked. They ordered take-out at least three times a week (from their local Italian, Chinese and Greek restaurants, in no particular sequence) and lived off microwave meals the other four days of the week. It wasn't that they couldn't cook - Craig wasn't that bad with pasta and eggs and stuff - it was just the time and energy they didn't have that made microwave meals and take-out a God-given gift.

Clyde fumbled around the kitchen(-closet) for a quick breakfast to keep him going for the day. Cold cereal was a last resort more often than not, but Clyde wasn't taking chances with that chunky-looking milk and the box of Fruity Pebbles that he very well suspected were now Fruity Sand.

What was quicker than cold cereal? What other crap could they possibly have? Quicker than cereal, yet just as sugary, if not even _more_ sugary—_Pop-Tarts! _Of course! They always had a box of the simplest pastry of all mankind stored somewhere in their little cabinets. It wasn't particularly Clyde's favorite flavor, only because when they went manly-man grocery shopping together, they didn't really want to spend time arguing about flavors, so it was Rock, Paper, Scissors for whoever got to choose the flavor for the week, and Craig had won (no matter how many times Clyde insisted that rock can beat paper's ass any day, and the paper was a pussy) so Clyde had to settle for that wildberry one with the purple and blue frosting.

When Clyde heard the bathroom door swing open, he knew he had to speed it up, so he wondered which method of toasting his Pop-Tarts was faster - toaster or microwave? Since toasting Pop-Tarts seemed to be such a hard task with his head focused on dressing and showering, he actually turned the box to read the complex set of directions. Thanking the Pastry Gods, he put a single Pop-Tart in the microwave, on high, for three whole seconds.

He was just following what the box said.

The three seconds that passed before he opened the microwave actually felt like three seconds. But when he picked up the Pop-Tart, and stuck it in his mouth as he ran towards the bathroom, he realized how the temperature of the Pop-Tart had hardly changed. Bumping Craig in the shoulder, he muttered, "I think I missed a step." He slammed the bathroom door behind him.

Craig stopped in his tracks, cocking an eyebrow. "How do you miss a step toasting Pop-Tarts?"

Clyde, with the Pop-Tart dangling from his mouth for its own dear life, stripped himself to hop into their decent shower. Although it was at least a little flamboyant by the bright fishes on the curtain, several tiles were missing from their wall and floor.

When Clyde turned on the water, it was ice cold. His mouth gaped open when it hit him, and it hit him hard. His Pop-Tart was no more, rapidly getting soggy in the water, but Clyde couldn't care less about the Pop-Tart. He needed to wash off his shell of Sunday laziness. And no matter how many times the Axe body wash commercial told him it would wake him up and make him more alert, or at least splash a metaphorical bucket of cold water in his face, he never seemed to be able to pay attention to anything during the day. So, he rubbed it all over himself in hopes of it at least making him smell pretty good as a substitute for having a short attention span.

Craig, on the other hand, was practically positive he had a naturally good smell. Almost positive. He couldn't really smell himself unless he manually applied it, but he was sure because no one ever really told him he smelled bad. He can only assume from that, that he smelled like a god. A god with fantastic breath. A god standing by the front door of the apartment in his plain work clothes, a black T-shirt and manly Levi's jeans. A god who is very annoyed that his job doesn't allow him to wear the chullo on his head during work hours, so he wears it with the strings tied loosely around his neck with the hat lying against his upper back. The god is growing impatient with Clyde. The god is tapping his foot, _tap tap tap tap tap_, as if it's going to make Clyde's Pop-Tart shower any faster. It's not like either of them were in a rush. Perhaps Craig just needed something to be angry about.

Clyde stumbled out of the shower with great attempt to not knock over his pack of adhesive bacon strip bandages from its spot on the sink. The bacon strip bandages were the least of his worries when he ended up dragging the shower curtain straight off its rod and practically crawled out of the bathroom on all fours, completely wet and in the nude with nothing but a shower curtain covering his most precious parts. He stopped crawling for a moment. He started to go in reverse, to retrieve the towel he'd left on the floor; he stuck one foot in the bathroom and dragged out the towel, along with the dark blue circular rug (also the property of Craig, he remembered). He tossed the towel over his body, and continued to crawl into his room with the shower curtain beneath him. It took him much longer than he would have hoped to finally get into his room and close the door. A piece of the shower curtain peeked out of the corner of the closed door. Clyde opened his door a crack, and pulled the piece back into his room with him.

Craig decided he kind of didn't need to see any of that.

He also decided that Clyde was the reason they were always late in the morning.

Craig parted with the wall he was leaning against and knocked on the door of Clyde's bedroom with the back of his middle finger. "I'm driving."

Clyde, struggling to get his head through his small argyle sweater vest, emitted short noises of effort in his dressing process. On both sides of the door between them, there was silence. A soft grunt or two.

Silence. Silence.

"... 'Kay."

Acceptable response. For now.

Craig had to walk a couple of blocks from their apartment building to find their two-door car, parked outside someone else's house. She was a white Hyundai, named Tits, and she, too, was only sufficient enough to keep them comfortable on cold nights when all they could depend on were the drive-throughs of White Castle and Dunkin' Donuts. Empty boxes that were once the homes of fish nibblers and delicious cheeseburgers littered the backseats, and the floors beneath the front seats still reeked of spilled coffee, and whatever other unidentifiable liquids they've spilled.

The cup holders also served as ash trays. This proved to be a problem when they actually needed to hold cups, resulting in their various spilled liquids. Green Marlboro packs were stuffed in corners, scattered along the floors, flattened by their sneakers. The smell of tobacco contributed to the atmosphere, all of coffee and trash.

Even though Craig hated Tits, he appreciated the convenience she provided for him in life. He appreciated her ability to hold food and crap like that; but he didn't like the way Tits looked or the way she would stall when he turned her on, and he didn't even like her hubcaps. Clyde had asked him, "How can you hate Tits, after all we've been through with her?"

Craig just didn't like Tits.

Craig plugged his iPod into the designated connection to Tits, which was another part of the "waiting for Clyde to get his lazy ass dressed so we can get to work" routine. If he had a car ride without music, he was _sure_ that he would die. Probably because, if there was no music blasting at max volume, then Clyde would probably bring up some uncomfortable subject about body parts or fried chicken or porn or something.

_"So, dude, like... this chick I work with, right? She was talking about... um... participating in this walk for breast cancer awareness, so she wanted to know if we wanted to like participate and do a good deed, I guess."_

_"I don't do cancer walks. The last time I did, that spazzy blond kid was with me—"_

_"Tweek? You talk about him a lot."_

_"I do not, don't interrupt me. So, yeah, and the fucker beat me 'cause I told him if he didn't run enough laps, he was going to get fined. He believed me."_

_"I just got a shitload of porn_."

_Craig decided to never, ever, ever have a car ride without music again._

Craig shuddered at the memory of that conversation and carried on with blasting Lady Gaga at max volume. He also decided to light a cigarette, considering Clyde would take awhile.

So, Clyde had decided to nix the geeky sweater vest, only because he completely forgot that it was Monday, and Mondays were the days he worked at GameStop, and not at the shoe store, which he bothered to look presentable for. His walk to the car was, of course, filled with deeply philosophical thoughts about his life - Clyde had a busy life, and he knew it. He had to get up in the morning. Take a piss. Take a shower. Play Xbox. Go to work and class occasionally. Okay, so he went to work a lot (maybe not class), but that didn't stop him from playing Xbox and taking a piss where ever he pleased. Okay, so maybe he didn't take a piss where ever he pleased, but he knew radioactive green Gatorade didn't treat his bladder well.

The voice of Lady Gaga lead Clyde to Tits easily, and he called shotgun as if he had any other option, just in time for _Telephone_.

Clyde, nor Craig, for that matter, couldn't listen to _Telephone_ without singing along loudly with the windows open, and they proceeded to do just that.

"_Hello, hello, baby, you called I can't hear a thing - I have got no service in the club you see, see, what-what-what did you say? Oh, you're breaking up on me_—"

At this point, either of them could give less of a rat's ass who considered them obnoxious for blasting the song so loud, bobbing their heads like idiots and Craig practically pushing the speed limit just getting out of their neighborhood.

Because Craig's job was a lot closer than Clyde's, he dropped himself off first. He worked on a street that had gotten busy after the thirty-ninth rebuilding of South Park. A lot of the offices and shit and whatnot were moved to bigger buildings downtown, and this particular street became more crowded with stores and restaurants. The area had its key indie designer boutique, a couple Chinese food places, a pizzeria or two, and an ice cream shop. The rest of it, Craig didn't bother remembering.

Craig parked the car in front of his stop and practically dreaded letting Clyde have the car for twenty minutes. "Drive her carefully, crackerjack," he said, securing the chullo strings around his neck (but still not too tight). He regretted to remind himself how much he hated tying the strings of his chullo around his neck; he feared the hat would fall off, but his internal alarms would go off far too early for him to even _let_ that happen. God forbid the strings go loose and the hat falls slowly down his back and onto the floor without him noticing - to _hell _with that, he would catch it like the badass ninja that he's not.

He worked at a restaurant. He guessed it was pretty okay. It was pretty okay that he worked at an American-based restaurant called 57's. It was heavily themed on the American culture of the 1950's, complete with a jukebox, and plasma-screen televisions. Not to mention vintage posters, and free Wi-Fi connection. It didn't feel very 1950's-y to him, but the place was bright colored in red, white and blue, and the seats were blindingly shiny. He liked the environment a lot better than the mundane cleaning of animal cages - something he would never do again. Another thing that easily canceled out the feeling of an actual 1950's environment was the painting that greeted him and every customer every time they walked in. At the entrance of the restaurant, the painting _Boulevard of Broken Dreams _hung proudly. It was painted in 1984, but the actors were from the 50's, so that didn't matter, right?

He wasn't so good with history.

When Craig wasn't bussing tables or listening to people's life problems at the bar, he'd be running for Disgruntled Employee of the Month, or, when not even doing that, he'd turn off his disgruntled attitude and wait tables with a reputation of being "that cool waiter who takes your order without writing it down." Craig's lefty handwriting was eminently illegible, so he took the liberty in learning how to memorize people's orders. He knew chicks dug it when he'd look at them like he's undressing them with his eyes while she ordered her Caesar salad with all its specific and thorough details; ranch dressing in a cup on the side, no croutons, and low on the cheese. Craig remembered it. He'd have to - he'd get a big tip, and he always did. And _no_, he would argue, it is not the same thing as being a Raisins girl, even if he did fake his smiles and play the "I'm Interested" game with talkative customers.

There was a guy Craig worked with, whose name was Joe. In fact, to Craig, his name wasn't even Joe. It was Fucking Joe. Fucking Joe was always there before Craig when the place opened, rinsing a dish, as if it looked like he was doing any real work. Craig didn't blame him, yeah, he did that shit all the time, but did Fucking Joe have to do it with such class?

"_Craaaaaig_, man," Fucking Joe spoke, "late, much?"

And Craig wasn't so sure why he hated Fucking Joe so much.

Perhaps he just needed someone to hate.

Maybe it was because Fucking Joe was kinda fat.

"Yeah. Roommate, you know. Can't take a shower without making it complicated," Craig replied. "Wasted a Pop-Tart, too."

Fucking Joe practically dropped the dish. "_God_, not a Pop-Tart!" _Yeah, you would say that, tubby. _"What kind?"

"The blue and purple kind."

"Oh. In that case, it wasn't quite wasted." _Fuck you, Fucking Joe, those are my favorite kind._

Craig put on the flimsy apron and loaded his stash of straws and other crap. His utility apron. It sounded a lot cooler than what it actually was.

A couple of old folks made small talk at a booth beneath one of the huge flatscreen televisions. Craig had no guilt in interrupting their conversation. He never did.

"Hey, what's up, I'm Craig. Can I start you guys off with something to drink today?"

* * *

Craig left his iPod in the car.

And that was okay.

"_Rah-rah, AH-AH-AHHH, ro-mah, ro-MAH-MAH-MAH, ga-ga, OOH LA-LA—"_

Clyde belted out familiar chants as he earned glances from weirded out drivers, and thumbs up from some others. He reached for his phone, sitting in the passenger seat. He wanted to check his application download status: approximately 70% completed. He was downloading the infamous Facebook application. He smiled down at his phone with a seemingly evil nature. At least he tried.

_Eyes on the road, Donovan! _

He could have sworn Lady Gaga was talking to him.

He swerved slightly and let out a short, frightened gasp as a horn echoed behind him. "Shit," he muttered, holding a death grip on the steering wheel. He decided that when he goes to court after a car accident, he'll blame Lady Gaga for the whole thing. He knew that she had that kind of power, and he'd definitely be in the clear if he got _her_ into it. Either that, or he'd get sued up the ass. He preferred the former, and he couldn't imagine what worse things could go up his ass besides the law.

When he got to the South Park Mall, his application had already finished downloading. He strolled through the parking lot with his eyes on his Droid and ever so happily accepted friend requests from people he wasn't even sure he knew - but, hey, if they had one or two mutual friends, it was all good. Accepted. Another friend to add to his sea of popularity...

... Which, he regretted to remember, has very much died down over the years. He was even glad to have like five Facebook friends at the moment. But people didn't get Facebook friends _that_ fast...

Did they?

Nah.

He walked into GameStop, still messing around with his phone. He'd practically bumped into the security scanners, to which Clyde's co-worker, Joe, laughed about.

This Joe was very different from Fucking Joe. There was a lot less "fucking" and a lot less weight to make fun of. This Joe was lanky and tall. He had dark, curly hair that he kept gelled, and a moustache that you could barely call a moustache. It was invisible from certain angles, though very visible from others. And he would not get rid of it.

Clyde refrained from flipping off 'Stache Joe, as he very, very much did not want to let go of his phone. Bad choice, he realized, when he bumped into a shelf of game guides and elegantly knocked over thick, shrink-wrapped books of cheats. "Sssh-_abootie,_" he murmured again under his breath, and glanced upward at a giggling 'Stache Joe. "What are you laughing at?"

"You, son," 'Stache Joe said. "Why you late?"

"Because!" Clyde exclaimed, and held his Droid in 'Stache Joe's face. "This."

'Stache Joe stroked his own face. He smiled and said, "Yo, you deadass _just_ joined Facebook?"

"Yeah," said Clyde. "I'm already off to a good start."

"Oh, word?" 'Stache Joe said. "How many friends you got?"

"Uhh." Clyde looked back down at his phone and viewed his own profile. "Five."

"You like, two years late."

"I know. That's what Craig said," Clyde told him. He kept his eyes dead set on the phone, and staring down at it with all the seriousness he could muster, he briefly considered putting it away and organizing some games or something, like he was paid to do. The phone dinged happily with the notification of another friend request. "Ooh!" he squealed, "Jimmy requested me."

'Stache Joe merely blinked. "You're mad whack."

Clyde wasn't so sure what that meant. "Thank you."

_"What's new, pussycat? Wooooah, woooah!"_

"God, not this song, AGAIN!"

Craig tugged at his hair in frustration. Five times. Five times already. Five times he heard this song. Actually, he didn't know how many times it was anymore. He lost count after the third time. He wasn't even sure when the song ended, because it was always the same. First he thought, _hey, this song is longer and more annoying than I thought_. But now, he was sure. He was sure someone was doing this to him on purpose. If he heard Tom Jones' _What's New, Pussycat _one more time, he swore he was going to shoot Fucking Joe in the face and feed his body to flocks of hungry pigeons. He was going to flip a table and break which ever jukebox someone was abusing to reign torture upon the entire restaurant. He knew that whoever was behind this had to be some sort of evil, genius sadist. It'd also have to be someone with change to spare for the jukeboxes. He would take their coins and feed it to the pigeons as well. Anything to get this shit to stop.

In the midst of his violent fantasies, he found himself holding two hot plates. "Table thirteen," he was told, and subconsciously, he brought the plates to the table. From what he could see without looking up, one of the two guys' stomachs was large enough to fit over the edge of the table, while the other was thin and could barely fill the booth.

"Here you go, guys," Craig said flatly.

He then looked up to two, rosy red faces, bloated with laughter. The skinny one had his hand on the jukebox buttons, ready to push D3, the combination for _What's New, Pussycat._

Craig pointed a finger at the kid. "You!" he cried.

Kenny laughed. "Don't you love this song, Craig?"

Cartman's face was buried in his thick arms, jerking up and down with inaudible, hysterical laughs. He perked up, tears in his eyes. "Oh, man! The look on everyone's face after the fourth play! Jesus, the sweet, sweet looks on their tortured faces..." He wiped a tear. "I can't breathe. Christ on the third rail, I cannot breathe."

Craig's face was expressing the same, unimpressed blankness he's had since the day of his birth. This was not funny. His headache was not funny. His inability to remember orders today was not funny. The old woman behind him, calling for a waiter was not funny. "I'll be with you in a moment, ma'am," he said to her, through his teeth. He turned back to Fat Albert and Mushmouth, with the tips of his eyebrows practically touching. "You two are the reasons I've been wanting to kill myself for the past half hour."

"Oh, ohhh!" Cartman raised his hands. "Be my guest, Craig! By all means! Those quarters do go into your paycheck, after all." He leaned back coolly. Craig squinted and wanted to murder him. He wanted to slice his huge belly open and remove each and every chunk of his anatomy, one by one, and make him eat it. Because, he probably would do it without his help, anyway. He'd do whatever was in his power to ruin his life just as Cartman did for him - well, at least ruin his body. He couldn't even bear to look at Cartman's face anymore.

And he'd kill Kenny, too, if only he could stay dead.

"Swear. To God," Craig seethed, "if you play that song one more time..."

Dead silence.

A heap of relief fell over the restaurant.

"... _What's new, pussycat? Wooooah, wooooah!"_

Craig's fists flew into the table. "God_dammit_!"

"Nah-ah-ahh, Craig," Cartman said, holding a quesadilla with one hand and wagging his finger with the other. "Care and kindness for the customers."

Craig pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

"Excuse me, sir? Sir?"

"Oh, look at that, Craig, you have business to take care of," Cartman said. He shooed him away with his free hand.

"Yeah, I'm coming," Craig said, and he left the table.

Kenny's hand reached for a french fry, and Cartman reached for the same one. Their hands touched, but it was a static shock of, "Bitch, that is my fucking french fry." They stared each other in the eyes for a quick moment before Cartman claimed the fry for himself. Kenny almost wanted to cry. Almost. But there were other fries in the stack.

"Where you sleeping tonight?" Cartman asked, with his mouth full. Full of _Kenny's_ french fry.

"Where ever I crash."

"That's what you always say, fag."

"Because it's true."

Cartman chuckled. "I knew you'd end up like this."

"End up like what?"

"Like homeless, dick." He dipped another fry into ketchup, and mustard, and the ketchup again, and devoured it.

"I'm not homeless," Kenny argued lamely. He liked to consider himself the opposite. He had many homes. He lived in a different place every day. He was very lucky to have the homes he did. Stan's, Kyle's, his brother's, Token's sometimes, his brother's again, some chick he doesn't know. He never settled in one place. He was a traveler. Not homeless.

"Man, you don't have a fuckin' address. I'm pretty sure that's fuckin' homeless," Cartman said, shrugging and dipping his quesadilla into the sour cream, guacamole, and sour cream again.

"All my shit is addressed to my mom's."

"But do you _stay_ there?"

"Well, I—"

"Do you _stay_ there?"

"Listen—"

"Do. You. _Stay_ there?"

"No, fuck you, dude!"

They reached for the same french fry again, and the second time their hands brushed, it was more of a static shock of, "Do you really want to go over this again?" They repeated the question in each other's eyes. Their hands twitched in unison, and the other grabbed it.

Cartman let him have it.

* * *

Shift was over at 4:30 for Clyde, and if he was hungry, he would waste no time driving to 57's. He'd normally go home to take a nap; otherwise Craig would accuse him of having the nature of a clingy boyfriend if he visited Craig at his job every day. He just liked the egg creams at 57's, and their burgers were mean mofos. He really wanted a cheeseburger. No time was wasted.

Well, maybe a little. He might have missed a green light or two just to sing some extra Lady Gaga lyrics, but that was it. Okay, so maybe he Facebooked a little, too.

_**Clyde Donovan **__is driving to 57's!_

He thought all six of his friends needed to know.

He parallel parked Tits about a block away from the restaurant, due to the several trucks blocking off other spaces (parallel parking; one of the higher challenges in his life). He sashayed on into the restaurant upon hearing _What's New, Pussycat_. He knew where Craig was if he hadn't been waiting tables; he sat down enthusiastically on a shiny, red, spinny seat at the bar, one of his favorite parts of 57's (besides the suggestive vintage posters and photos of Marilyn Monroe). Craig was already there, pulling the good old washing-a-clean-dish trick.

"'Sup, man?" Clyde said.

Craig was about ready to cry. And Craig never cried. "Two hours," he said softly. "Two hours. Of... _this._"

Clyde blinked. "What?" Craig said nothing. He stared at the wall behind Clyde. Clyde looked behind him, expecting there to be a person or an entertaining occurrence, but no. Clyde tapped a beat on the table and began to mutter words. "_I love you, yes, I do, you and your pussycat nose..."_

"Of THAT!" Craig was screaming now. Clyde felt small. "Of this... _ffuuuuhh_—" Children walked by. "Freaking song."

"What, this one?" _Yeah, what else? _"I like this song."

"You like it _once,_" Craig corrected, scrubbing the dish even harder. "You cannot. Cannot. Like it for two hours." He stopped. He gazed to his right, snapped back, and spoke to Clyde again. "You need something?"

"Yeah, burger?" Clyde requested, flipping out his Droid.

"Full price today, dickhead," Craig said, putting down the dish in front of Clyde. Clyde glared into the plate as Craig walked off. He could see his reflection in it, it was so damned clean. He felt a moment of self-pity, as the plate made him look kind of ugly, and nonetheless fat. He shouldn't have ordered a cheeseburger. How many calories is that, like, a billion? What would he do when he was bigger? Cartman's size, even? Who would be Clyde then?

"Hey, man, need the plate."

A voice broke his train of thought. Fortunately for him, at least. A larger, Filipino guy, nametagged "Joe," eyed him and the plate he needed. _This is Fucking Joe?_

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, dude."

"S'alright." Joe took the plate, and brushed Craig's shoulder as he came back with a single burger on a plate. He slid it carelessly on the table, along with a glass bottle of black cherry 57's soda.

"Burger's full price, drink's on me," he said calmly, rubbing his temples, eyes fluttering closed.

"Thanks, man." Clyde took a swig of the dark red drink, smacking his lips as the glass rim separated from his mouth. "Hey, Tom Jones finally shut up."

"We unplugged the jukeboxes," Craig said. "I cannot believe we didn't think of that before."

Clyde did nothing but shrug. He bit into his burger. The restaurant was quiet, but Craig's tired head was throbbing with repeats of the dreaded pussycat.

"Sing me a song," Craig demanded. Anything to get it out of his head.

Clyde swallowed. "Uh," he mustered intelligently, licking pieces of food between his teeth. "Hello, hello, baby, you called, I can't hear a thing... I have got no service in the club you see, see..."

"What, what, what did you say? Oh, you're breaking up on me..." Craig continued in a monotone, lacking rhythm, tiredly and almost reluctantly. He trailed off, and when Clyde continued the song, he didn't sing along. His fist was pressed against the side of his face as he gazed to the right again.

There was a truck. A couple of trucks, with boxes of who-knows-what. But, he did know who was schlepping them. Back and forth, for the past ten minutes, that spazzy blond kid who Craig did _not_ talk about a lot, was moving boxes in and out of the coffee shop, one store away. There was a florist in between Tweek Bros. Coffee and 57's; Paul's Flowers.

To the shop and back, over and over and over, Tweek's pretty little arms were locked tightly onto a box that looked too big for him to hold. His small figure could have crumbled at any moment, schlepping those boxes of who-knows-what. Every time he went back for another box, still in his visor and apron, he looked relieved to let his arms loose for just a moment, until he was given another box heavier than the last. His legs always buckled as he held them. Why wouldn't anyone help him? There was one guy handing him boxes, but no one was going between the truck and the shop as much as Tweek - at least not in Craig's field of view, but Tweek was visibly sweating.

Craig released his fist from his face and trudged out of the restaurant. He stopped Tweek in his tracks and touched the box. "Hey, man, can I help you with that?"

Tweek let out a breath of relief. "Oh, Jesus, yes! Please, I, I mean I wouldn't want to cause any trouble for you, but I don't know how much more of this I can take," he said, taking off his visor and running his fingers through his near-yellow mess of hair. "Thanks so much..."

... Only that's what Craig imagined himself doing.

He could have sworn he done it. But, he was still just looking at Tweek, or checking him out, per se, though he preferred not to use such terms. And his cheek was starting to hurt, as well as his ears; Clyde was still singing _Telephone. _

And now, for Craig, everything hurt. Including his heart, which he also preferred not to say. Was it the heart, really? Or was it just the mind?

He hated getting philosophical.

But, he couldn't help himself at the moment.

Without looking at Clyde, he spoke. "Did you ever wonder," he said, "what, or... how... humans are programmed to respond to things?"

One of Clyde's cheek's was full. He swallowed again. "What?"

Tweek had stopped to talk to someone. Craig wouldn't dare look away. "I mean, like... as humans, aren't we supposed to... we're programmed to respond to stimulants. Kind of like animals. Like birds. Birds are programmed to respond to..." He stopped. "... Are you following me?"

"Uh, no, not really," said Clyde.

"Oh, that's okay. Just let me talk. Don't interrupt, I swear to God I'll confiscate your burger and charge you for ten sodas, deal?"

Clyde nodded.

"Okay. So... birds. Birds are programmed to respond to bright colors of feathers, or the songs of the birds of the opposite sex, 'cause they gotta get laid and lay some eggs eventually. We, as humans, you know, are not totally different from animals... I mean, evolution, man. We're monkeys. We're programmed to respond to certain stimulations, no matter what... like a certain type of person." He looked at Tweek, and the way he was so animated when he spoke. Craig sat up straighter and began to move his hands with his speech. "Blond with brown eyes, for example," he continued, "facial features, body type, even the sound of a voice or a smell or something. So, you're programmed to respond to the stimulant much like you respond to... to..." He glanced around for a moment, in hopes of coming to a sensible comparison. He looked at Clyde, then his eyes moved downward. "... A cheeseburger. The face, the smell, you respond by salivating, like, you _want_ that cheeseburger, man. The cheeseburger looks delicious, and attractive, with its melty cheese, fresh beef and buns." Clyde was beginning to enjoy the burger even more; an unthinkable feat. "And you know it looks good, so you try it. You chew on it. And sometimes, it just doesn't taste so great... you know what I mean?"

Clyde didn't know what he meant, but he nodded anyway. That burger was delicious, but he agreed with Craig no matter what.

Clyde's phone dinged.

"Ooh!" he said, setting his half-burger down. "I think I got a friend request. From..." he opened the message. "Bebe? Dude, Bebe just—"

Craig took his phone and threw it over his shoulder.

"D-Dude, that was my—"

"I am talking," Craig said. "Anyway... You get to know your cheeseburger. You analyze the layers and condiments of the cheeseburger, what _really_ makes that cheeseburger the cheeseburger you want. But cheeseburgers are fattening, no doubt, and besides the fact that they're fattening, they don't always taste so good. It's possible that although a cheeseburger may look good on the outside, its insides and components don't always apply to what you look for beyond the surface of your cheeseburger. So you may not finish your cheeseburger. You may hate a cheeseburger. And if you're lucky, you've got yourself a good cheeseburger - great on the outside and the inside. And you finish that cheeseburger. You _make love_ to the cheeseburger, because it's _your_ cheeseburger, and you _love_ that cheeseburger like no other cheeseburger you'd ever encountered." He stopped. "Did that make sense?"

"All I heard was cheeseburger," Clyde said, shaking his head.

"Expected," said Craig. "Well, what I'm saying is that cheeseburgers, um, _people_, may look good on the outside, but that doesn't mean it, or, _they _are necessarily good people. Or good for you. Cheeseburgers aren't very good for you." He kept his eyes on Tweek, who now seemed to be holding light bags. Craig was glad that Tweek got to rest his strength. But God, did he wish he helped him. God, the things he wished he could have done. "Also," he said, "Cheeseburgers can look gross. They can be huge and ugly and dripping with all these fatty liquids. But then you should not underestimate the cheeseburger. It's more likely to taste better if it's layered with all these complicated things that make it up." He looked around the room again. Each time he looked away from Tweek, it was refreshing to look back. But then he looked farther to his right. A boy, not much older than Craig or Clyde, with his face in a book, glasses horn-rimmed and at the tip of his nose. The boy pushed them up as he reached for a small candy from a tin, and placed it in his mouth.

"Look at that cheeseburger," Craig said, pointing to the kid.

"What cheeseburger?"

"That cheeseburger."

"I don't see a cheeseburger."

Craig rolled his eyes. "That _dude_!" he hiss-whispered. "Does _he_ look like an appealing cheeseburger to you?"

"Well, with his face in the book, I can't really tell or not..."

"_Does_ he?"

"Well, ah, no, I wouldn't say so, I don't think..."

"But, if he doesn't look like a good cheeseburger on the _outside_, does that necessarily mean that he isn't a tasty cheeseburger?"

"Are we speaking sexually or metaphorically?"

"Metaphorically, I have been for the past five minutes."

"Well, I wouldn't judge him by how he looks..." Clyde said. He kept his vision fixed on the dark-haired kid. His hair very badly needed to be washed, and Clyde was a little close to asking him if he could taste one of those little candies he was snacking on. "He can't help how he looks."

"Neither can a cheeseburger," said Craig, picking up Clyde's cheeseburger between his fingers. "... Ew." He dropped it.

Craig looked back outside. The trucks were gone. So was Tweek.

"Whatever, dude," Craig said. "Have fun with your cheeseburger."

* * *

It was three in the morning. And there was a light on in the kitchen.

All that was going through Craig's mind was, "Dammit, Clyde."

The faint, flickering light from the refrigerator poked at Craig's eyes rudely. He pulled the blanket over his head and groaned.

Clyde's eyes felt stabbed from the sudden light. His eyes were red and exhausted, squinting into the fridge like an endless vortex of wonderful, glorious food. Only, he wished he could call it glorious. They were a bit lacking. Nothing had changed since that morning, not even the fact that Clyde felt the need to eat again. Maybe it was the accomplishment of actually getting himself from his bedroom to the kitchen, in the dark, that made him want to reward himself with food.

The fridge did him no justice, so he opened the cabinet. He narrowed his eyes and turned on the night vision that he didn't have. But, he was sure he did have food vision. He was able to process the last package of Easy Mac, glowing a godly light in the night.

He set up the container in the macaroni the way he memorized: Water filled to the line, put in microwave for three minutes on high.

When his three minute nap was up, the Easy Mac was boiling and watery. _Hey_, he thought, _maybe it'll change when I put the cheese in_. So, he poured the pack of powdered cheese into his macaroni soup and stirred thoroughly until smooth and creamy (said the instructions).

It was still soup. It didn't smell, nor taste, nor feel, like the Easy Mac he knows and loves. A flaming tube of macaroni trailing off his tongue, he muttered, "I think I missed a step."

Craig was already leaning on the kitchen doorway, arms crossed along his bare chest. "How do you miss a step cooking Easy Mac." Declarative, not interrogative. "It's _Easy_ Mac."

Clyde hung his head in shame, and didn't say another word. Craig threw out the tainted Easy Mac and made Clyde a Celeste frozen pizza, the way it was supposed to be made. He put the perfectly cooked pizza onto a paper plate and put it on the table for Clyde to eat in peace. "Your majesty's pizza," Craig said.

Clyde smiled. "Thank you," he said softly, and sat in the folding chair. He then hesitated.

"What is it."

"There are sausages on this."

"So?"

"Sausages taste funny."

"Take them off."

"But it's hot."

"Wait for it to cool off."

"That'll take too long."

"Oh my fucking God."

Craig found it in his heart to remove each and every sausage for Clyde. He held the small, round sausages in his left hand, his palm getting coated in red sauce. He checked the pizza for any extra sausages, but Clyde confirmed that it was clear. ("They look like bloody turds," Clyde had quietly claimed, but Craig didn't laugh.) He heaved open the window with his right hand and, in one shot, chucked all the sausages beyond their territory.

"You're welcome."

* * *

It was four in the morning. And there was a light on in the bathroom.

All that was going through Craig's mind was, "Dammit, Clyde."

Okay, so, Craig didn't blame Clyde for having to go to the bathroom at 4 AM, but did he have to make so much noise? Now, Craig was glad Clyde didn't eat the sausages on the pizza. Because, this could have been much, much worse than it already was. Craig gripped the pillow and prayed to some God that he wouldn't have to get dragged into this again.

Clyde was half-asleep on the toilet. One arm was on the sink, and both of his eyelids felt heavier than shit.

Pun unintended.

He reached for the toilet paper, and he swore, he solemnly swore that he could do this without getting into some sort of trouble with himself, and he swore that he saw a jellybean.

It _was_, in fact, a chocolate-butterscotch jellybean, on the toilet paper roll. That's what it looked like. It was unmistakable. He didn't understand how anyone could have argued with him, because _that's what it was_. The only solid argument he could think of, was that jellybeans do not crawl.

He shrieked.

Pants around his ankles, for the second time in twenty-four hours, he ran out of the bathroom, ass exposed.

Craig shut his eyes tighter and prayed to whatever God that was on his side right now that he was dreaming and he would not open his eyes and see Clyde's ass.

Unfortunately, no God was on his side tonight.

"What happened this time."

"There's—there's a—crawling. Crawling jellybean."

"Crawling jellybean?"

Craig was very concerned that he knew exactly what Clyde was talking about. He brought Clyde to the bathroom with him (Clyde pulling up his pants in the process) and searched for the "crawling jellybean."

"Where did you see it?" Craig asked.

"On the... the toilet paper roll."

"Wait..." Craig spread his arms out, to shield Clyde. "Wait... Wait—IT'S ON THE FLOOR! I SEE IT! YOU LITTLE MOTHERFUCKER—!"

Clyde screamed again.

Craig attempted to murder the little bitch with his bare hands. "NO! NO! YOU, COME BACK, YOU WHORE."

Clyde was already out the door.

"YOU THINK YOU'RE BAD? YOU THINK YOU'RE COOL, MOTHERFUCKER? STOP MOVING. NO—NO, FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU." The roach already crawled between some cracks, and was nowhere to be seen. Craig scared it away. He knew he did.

Clyde had ran to the front of the apartment. He decided that if he had to escape, he'd best be closest to the door.

Craig emerged from the bathroom, brushing himself off. "I killed it," he said.

"Really?" Clyde said. "It's gone?"

"Yeah, yeah. Go to sleep."

Clyde frowned. His arms were open.

Craig was halfway into bed. "What."

The other smiled bashfully, and waved his arms slightly. "Bro hug?"

"What."

"Bro hug?" he repeated. "We're bros."

"Clyde, man, you really need to sleep—"

Clyde took him in his arms anyway. He squeezed tight, like a bro would. Craig didn't hug back. Clyde hugged even harder, and Craig surrendered him a pat on the back. Then his arms rose, and eventually, he experienced a hug. Hugs were okay. Hugs made everything seem okay.

Everything is okay.

_but i'm too tired to go to sleep tonight, and i'm too weak to follow dreams tonight  
for the first time in a long time, i can say  
that i want to try to get better and, overcome each moment  
in my own way.  
i so want to get back on track... and i'll do whatever it takes,  
even if it kills me.  
-_**even if it kills me **by **motion city soundtrack**


	2. the art of origami

**A/N: **UGH SORRY IT'S TOTALLY BEEN SIX MONTHS. 8| Seriously, I am SORRY and I totally can't believe how long this took. Well, I can. I take forever to finish everything. What else is new. ANYWAY...

I think it's ridiculous how many reviews this has gotten on the first chapter alone! Like, it's not bad at all, I am just in awe. I remember when I started in this fandom I would kill for this many reviews on a single chapter, a-and I hope to get more. 8( This chapter is like... I don't even know if I like it even after it's taken so long. I JUST DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT IT ANYMORE. I cut out an entire scene after I realized how unnecessary it was, and actually, everything before the last scene is UNNECESSARY BEYOND BELIEF, I WROTE IT BECAUSE I WANTED TO, OKAY and I want you to enjoy it. D: Fanfictiony goodness, how I've missed you.

SO YEAH THIS CHAPTER IS A FUCKIN DOOZY, THERE'S A LOT OF THE WORD "FUCK" AND IT GETS SO DIALOGUE HEAVY AT THE END, I'M SORRY I'LL SHUT UP NOW D: but but there are so many people involved in this too I CAN'T THANK THEM ALL but everyone who's helped me with this, writing and concepts and art and everything, THANK YOU, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. :'D

Now, PLEASE ENJOY THIS LONG AWAITED CHAPTER, I hope I haven't lost any of you. 8( I am wishing for a review Christmas, but most of all you should just hdjlkhflsadjk ENJOY

**EDIT: **okay so it turns out I kept switching tenses so I tried to edit it. I AM SO TEMPTED to write in present tense because I like it a lot better, but nooo, Dee had to write it in past tense like 6 months ago. Sorry if it was distracting, those who read it in its UNEDITED FORM this has gotta be the longest chapter I've written for anything, so, EDITING IS A BITCH. Sorry! ENJOY IT IN ITS PAST TENSE GLORY, and if you see any raging typos, please let me know!

* * *

**ii. the art of origami**

_Is everything okay? _

_Yes, everything is okay._

_Are you feeling fine? _

_Yes, I feel fine..._

_Please tell me that you're alright._

_Yes, I'm alright._

Everything was okay. That was all that mattered. Tweek was breathing. Tweek was living. Everything was okay, and he was on track. He was not going to die any time soon. He was not going to drop dead from the pollution in the atmosphere, and no burglars, like the ones he saw on the news, oh, _God, _the news, were going to crash through his window and take his most valued belongings, such as his cereal, which was a part of his balanced breakfast, which he must have every morning because he could never forget that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. And it was not complete without a couple of the Tweak family's famous (famous, within a few-mile radius from the Harbucks a couple of towns down) cup of coffee.

"Oh my God."

Cabinet doors slammed. Packages of assorted snacks were flung across the kitchen. They hit the wall and, oh, geez, did he have to clean that up later.

"Oh my God."

_..._

"Oh my God."

He _just_ saw it. He knew he did. Could his eyes be deceiving him again? Well, of course, that would be a probable explanation and rather unsurprising, but _this_ time, oh, _God_, he was so positive that he'd just seen it, it was driving him mad that he couldn't locate it again. He'd already looked in all his drawers, under the bed, the sofa, but why would he spare the kitchen? It could be anywhere, and anywhere means anywhere.

They were all organized! Everything he'd ever cleaned and laundered with fresh-scented linen softener was in their place at all times, arranged smallest to largest by percentage of spandex (most of which had the same percentage, however, should this be the case, they would be organized alphabetically by color). Tweek had also alphabetized the food in the fridge (by food group), alphabetized the food in the cabinets (by brand name), organized the cereal boxes in ROYGBIV order (Fruit Loops, Cap'n Crunch's Peanut Butter Crunch, Golden Grahams, Apple Jacks, Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran), scrubbed every counter 'til he could see his reflection, vacuumed corner to corner, amongst many other things that fell under the category of "spotless," "perfect," and "completely and utterly obsessive-compulsive."

Now that a single thing had gone wrong, everything was ruined. The natural balance was completely destroyed. Nothing in this apartment would be right again. Until the item was recovered, the order could not be restored.

A single sock.

He could not go on until he found that sock. It was a black sock, with turquoise stripes ringing around the toe and heel area. What if he never found the sock again, and he would have to live the rest of his life with an uneven matching sock ratio? That _would_ be, unless, he gave up the single sock he was already wearing that was obviously a companion to the lost one. But _then_, he would be one pair of socks short, and thus, he would have thirteen pairs of socks - one pair for every day for two weeks, _minus_ one. And he couldn't just buy another pair, oh, no - he couldn't buy a pack of socks in less than groups of two - resulting in an odd sum of fifteen pairs of socks, one for every day for two weeks, _plus_ one. He decided that wasn't such a bad idea, considering he could possibly use a spare pair of socks, but that _also_ means he'd have another pair liable to be lost. Should he lose his spare pair, the cycle would repeat itself and he would spend much, much too much money on socks.

The potential amount of money he would spend on socks was absolutely nothing compared to how much time alone he was spending, just thinking about his socks.

He wouldn't blame the gnomes. Not this time. It was too obvious - why would they go for his socks as opposed to his underpants, which he so suddenly realized it was the briefs they were after, and not the boxers? They were _not_ the Sock Gnomes, and they just couldn't take the blame for his responsibilities.

Singing. Singing made everything seem better. More cheerful, yes, yes, more calm and collected, and peaceful...

_Where, oh, where, has my little sock gone, oh, where, oh, where could it beeeee? With its stripes so blue and its... stitches... so soft, oh, where, oh, where could it beeeee?_

The improvised rhyme played itself over and over in his head, and his fingers stopped shaking, and he stopped biting his bottom lip. His left, sockless foot halted its tapping against the cold, tiled floor and he collected himself.

Everything was okay. He'd just... he'd just buy another pack of the same kind of socks and give the extra pairs to charity, along with the sock with its lost partner, and he'd never find that other sock again and he'd have a perfect fourteen pairs again.

_But, oh, God, why would _they_ want an odd number of socks? _

What if he _did _rid himself of the lone sock, and he found the other one—

_Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzz..._

He answered his phone, "What? _What do you want?"_

"Where are you?"

The question was simple enough, but it sent Tweek's mind into a rush of more panic and instability. His eyes dashed across his surroundings, somewhat in search of an excuse that would make him sound like he was ready and not totally behind schedule because of a sock. To his dismay, there was no other way to say that he was at home, looking for his sock. Though, he could take a shot at twisting words.

Unfortunately, he had no time to think.

"I'm still at—God, no, I'm—uh, dad, I'm a little busy right now, okay?" He nipped at his own lip after speaking, caging in the trapped sounds and swears he wanted to yell.

"Do you know why coffee is wonderful? Because it's punctual."

_He's so insane! _"Yeah, yeah, dad, coffee is punctual, I'm just—" he gasped for air in his usual trial at speaking slowly and clearly to his own father. "I'm just busy. I'll be there in like ten minutes, okay?"

"I'd hope so."

"Okay, bye." But when he looked at his phone, he was relieved to see that his father had already hung up and he was free to scream. He didn't care who heard it or who thought he was out of his mind - he was respected enough, having the cleanest apartment on the entire floor, even with the elderly citizens occupying more than half the building (most of which were out of their own minds more so than Tweek could ever be). Their apartments were either cluttered with old cats or dying plants, and neither of those did any justice for the décor, nor the scent of the floor overall. Tweek's house smelled like (when he wasn't brewing coffee every other hour) those liquid plug-ins you get at the supermarket for a cheap price and you come home and they smell fucking amazing, but you have no idea how or why because it smells like a "fresh spring morning" and the plug-in container thing could be filled with Kool-Aid for all you know, but you don't want to risk drinking it because you'd probably die right then and there. The fresh spring morning one wasn't his first choice, it was the apple-cinnamon one, which he thought would make his apartment smell pretty fantastic, however, the scent ended up being stronger than real cinnamon, and it made his puppy sneeze everywhere.

Tweek did, in fact, after years of asking his parents as a child and gawking the pet store window for the majority of his lifetime, own a puppy. She was a cross between a Golden Retriever and a Black Labrador - her fur was soft and thick like that of a Retriever's, and the color was sleek and black. Her eyes glowed with a light warmth that gave Tweek a sense of protection during the night, and he loved her like a child.

And really, aside from any other human in the world, he cared that his dog thought he was out of his mind, or at least looked at him as though he were utterly unstable. His scream of frustration startled her as she sat in the doorway between Tweek's bedroom and the living room. She whimpered, and Tweek gritted his teeth at the sight of her face, sporting an expression close to concern, as far as Tweek could tell. She approached him slowly as he bent down to her level and set his shaking hand upon her head, steadying itself as his fingertips touched her fur. She nuzzled lightly and his sock suddenly didn't matter anymore.

The warmth of another living being under his touch filled him with a notion of reassurance - everything is alright, and he was going to get through the day, no matter what came his way, and no matter what stood in front of it.

And that made everything seem okay.

* * *

It was time to suck today's dick. That's what was on Craig's mind in the morning. It was rather ambitious, despite the three times he was woken up by Clyde that night, but was sort of an optimistic view in contrast - if Clyde hadn't already woken him up that morning, he may as well have been late for work.

_"Craig. Craig. Craig. Craig. Craig. Craig."_

_The lump of man underneath a too hot blanket stirred upon hearing his name being repeatedly called. He hoped to God he was dreaming again and this wasn't something else to hate his roommate for. Again. "What."_

_"Are potato chips vegetables?"_

_Craig didn't open his eyes. He closed them tighter, along with his fists clutching the pillowcase. "You wake me up," he growled, "for the third time in this ungodly hour of the morning to ask me if potato chips are vegetables."_

_Clyde blinked. His knees were pressed against the tough railing of the sofa bed, and his arm held his only teddy bear of sixteen years, named Eric, reasons unbeknownst to him. Clyde's bottom lip poked out, not that Craig could see. His voice remained soft, but he said with light sadness and disappointment, "I just wanted to know."_

Craig knew anyone would want to cancel out four-in-the-morning cockroaches, Clyde's ass and vegetable debates that never took place with the idea of sucking the dick of the day.

That might have been a little bit of a lie. He'd suck the dick of the day, sure, but the day was teabagging him right now. The sun was bright and the birds were chirping and he wanted to flip it the fuck off. Even his alarm seemed to be slapping him around right now, teasing him and making fun of him and screaming the same jingle over and over again in his ear. He would clench his phone so hard in his fist that it screams, not the same screaming sound that kicks his eardrums, but a muffled cry as if it's frightened of him, the scream of the hopeless, and then hurl it with all of his strength at the wall. He wants to see it dent the wall, and not like a little dent, but a well-sized, permanent sort of dent that he can pass by and pat with some degree of pride. And when his phone hits the wall he wants it to split into hundreds of tiny screaming pieces, bits of numbers and microchips splattered everywhere like technological gore, and every alarm on every phone and car and clock ever will never go off again.

And that was the last time his alarm went off.

He finally awoke. He stretched, arms up and behind his head, subconsciously flipping off the wall behind him, flopped down again and scratched his stomach.

He didn't make any coffee or food - he felt it was all spoiled. Clyde's food ventures the night (morning) prior had proved that they really didn't have much left to eat, and they had to plan a man grocery shopping trip together, and remember to never buy Easy Mac again (unless it was Spongebob-themed, Clyde would dream), nor would they buy the Celeste pizza with the sausages. Maybe they'd quit the Celeste kind and switch to Red Baron, or maybe Totino's pizza rolls.

In a matter of time, Craig was ready and he glanced at the clock. The clock read, "You're up too early to be serving dry pancakes to senile old people, Craig Tucker. You should be nestling your gorgeous self into the warmth of a sleeping bag made of a four-cheese Hot Pocket."

He agreed with the clock.

The door to Clyde's room was slightly opened. This didn't give Craig the chance to kick it down, he disappointedly thought. Instead, he pushed it hard with the palm of his hand, and it swung inwards and banged hard against the wall. There was an outline of the doorknob etched into the wall from how many times it'd been violently opened. The sound made it to Clyde's brain, but didn't completely wake him up.

Craig sat on the end of his bed. He slapped Clyde in the forehead, announced that the house was on fire, and dodged a kick to the head from Clyde as he flailed about the bed in sudden panic.

"_Fuck_, Craig, get the Pop-Tarts—"

"House isn't on fire, dude, I'm taking Tits, are you gonna need her later?"

Clyde flopped backward on his pillow. His head hit the headboard and he groaned, bringing his arm across his face. "... What time is it?"

"I think I'm gonna be out a little late, so—"

"What _time_ is it?"

"It's a quarter past fuck you, do you need Tits?"

Another groan. "... Yeah, man, I have crabs today..."

"You have class today? Well, you're capable enough to take a bus, right? I'll leave you quarters in the fridge."

Good enough. Clyde wouldn't remember to take them, otherwise. The bus route in South Park was one that wasn't scheduled too consistently, but it hit just about every corner of town, which didn't take very long, anyway. If Clyde managed to wake up by alarm and not by false fire warning from Craig, he should have been able to catch a bus to the community college before he could accidentally start a flood or something.

The first day of the semester, it happened to be... for Clyde. The first day he planned to _show_ _up_ - the semester happened to have started two weeks prior, and he may as well have been passed out in the back alley of a Mexican restaurant in place of that time.

Clyde rolled over so his face pressed flat into the pillowcase. He made a sound that Craig sort of thought could have been a sentence or question, but decided to disregard it considering Clyde didn't make it sound important enough for his acknowledgement.

"Sweet dreams, Snorlax," Craig said, with the rusty doorknob in hand, door creaking shut behind his back.

Whilst on his drive to work, Craig experienced two things he thought would never take place without Clyde in the car: Firstly, in an experiment to take a different route to Main Street, he made the most illegal of illegal U-turns in front of the entire one-hundred and eleventh precinct. The only reason he thought he didn't get busted was because the cops _had_ to have given him props for not _dying_ in the process of this dangerous turn. "If he actually makes it, we'll let him go," they'd say. Craig raced in the other direction, at the speed of sound - and the children were safe! The Subway parking lot was untouched! Drivers everywhere wept in jealousy as they cruised in their inferior vehicles.

Perhaps Craig could appreciate Tits after all.

_Secondly_, during his drive to work after the momentous U-turn, he found himself gazing through the not-so tinted windows of a neighboring car. There were children in the car, but no, no, that wasn't important. His eyes were half on the road and half wandering to the near northwest, where a glowing screen hung from the ceiling of a mini-van. He made out certain images, until he realized—

"Shit, it's Pumbaa."

Wasn't he always taught not to watch Disney movies while driving? Maybe it wasn't first rule in the _Driving for Schmucks _handbook, but it couldn't have been completely legal to be watching the movie in another car _while_ driving. He was going to stop. The light was about to turn green and he would keep his eyes on the road, except not really because this was his favorite part.

And then he hoped that no conveniently nearby cameras could film footage of Craig mouthing, "They call me _Mr. Pig_!"

Craig was satisfied. The car of lucky children hung a left and Craig went his merry way.

Merry.

Driving.

Driving.

Arrive. Check in.

"Craig, you look like a brick shithouse." A commenter. Craig knew who it was. Fuck that guy. In his mind, he pushes him aside with one finger and he goes bursting through the wall, and a fire starts and Craig walks away like he's got laundry to pick up. The laundry was actually a plate of dry pancakes that he served to senile old people, along with a cup of coffee with too little milk and too much sugar so he knew it was going to taste like shit and the cougar was going to complain and ask him to take it back.

But _before _any cougar has the chance to send back her putrid coffee—

"Craig."

_What._

"... Bro."

_Don't call me bro._

"We need you to get us coffee."

_It's not even eleven o'clock yet. _"But there is coffee here."

"It sucks."

"That's because I make it."

"So, stop making it."

"But you're saying you need me to get you guys coffee."

Fucking Joe sighed. The shorter ginger guy next to him looked up attentively and hopefully, like Craig was about to save his life or something. The ginger's nametag read "Lou" but Craig could have sworn he read "Douche." This is how Craig referred to him.

Douche coughed. "I really could use a caramel latte right now."

_That's a stupid drink. _"I don't know what you want me to do about that."

"And she wants a macchiato," F. Joe jolted his hairless head in the direction of a blond girl. The girl looked up, smiled and waved like a five year-old. Craig knew her. He didn't bother reading her nametag, but he thought she looked like a Beth so he called her Beth, though it probably wasn't even close to her real name at all.

"This information really doesn't have anything to do with me." Eye contact was completely out of the question right now. Craig stared straight over their heads. The wall was interesting.

"Listen to me, man," FJ spoke up, "You take this twenty bucks and get us—"

"I'm not taking your money." _I should take his money. _"I have to go make up for my own crappy coffee, thanks."

"_I'll_ take care of Joan Rivers over there," FJ assured.

'Joan Rivers' was already scouring her general area for Craig, and she was holding her coffee cup in that way like her lips touched the surface and the mere stench told her she didn't want it. She looked disgusted, but Craig couldn't tell whether or not that was just the Botox.

"Come on."

"No."

"Dude."

"You just want to get rid of me."

"And Douche needs his caramel latte." FJ didn't say 'Douche' but Craig could have sworn that was what he heard, and he stuck to it.

"So you admit you want to get rid of me."

"No."

"Yes."

"So, yes, you'll get drinks for us?"

"No!" Whatever internal thermometer that was measuring Craig's anger was about to explode into a huge middle finger to the face, and maybe a punch to the stomach. "It is not even my _fuckin'_ _break right now._" Teeth gritting and all, oh, the meter was high.

And then he could sense the woman's Botox cracking from yards away.

"Craig... don't be an asshole."

He didn't think. "Give me the money."

He ran.

When the crisp October air smacked him in the face, it came with a free lifetime supply of artificially scented pinecones which actually smell like God knows _what_, but _that_ also came with a pleasing smell of pumpkins, which were still in the process of being arranged outside of the flower shop next door. Craig jogged past it without stopping for a closer whiff of them. But all he knew was, on the first of October, it was beginning to smell like autumn.

And when he burst through the door of Tweek Bros. Coffee, the small chimes at the top of the door chimed _angrily_, and everyone _knew_ Craig entered the room. Well, at least a couple of people turned their heads, and it sort of reminded him of an old Western film where the wanted man would kick down the saloon doors with a toothpick in his mouth, and he's looking for someone to fight, and he's about to fight the ridiculous taxes on a fancy cup of coffee.

He walks in slowly, and the spurs on his cowboy boots are jingling with each step he takes - the whores with hearts of gold gaze at him, and the bartender shakes behind the counter.

He holds up his gun, and everything stops— "_Give me all your coffee_!"

Except, this wanted man actually walked in somewhat quietly and waited on the line like everyone else.

Waiting. Waiting. He should have turned back and curb stomp Fucking Joe's face into the ground. FJ would probably look the same. But Craig's shoes would probably be too bloodied for him to walk around in public. He wondered why he would worry more about his shoes than the fact that he'd curb stomped someone's face.

Well, shoes were more important than that, anyway.

He was looking at his shoes as he waited. He needed new ones. They were worn at the toes, probably from kicking around rocks as he walked and ramming his feet against the walls in his house out of frustration. He didn't even remember they were once decent-looking Nikes. He didn't even remember he once spent money on something that would die so fast. Much like goldfish.

"Next in line, please."

He was still thinking about his shoes.

"Next in line, please?"

_I think I remember Clyde taking off the little plastic things at the end of the laces so he could tape them together to make a fucking straw_—_oh, crap._

He walked to the front of the counter while staring at the menu intently, expecting the things his co-workers wanted to be highlighted in a nice, bright font. He only remembered that gay little caramel latte that Douche wanted. 'Beth' wanted something that ended in an "O" and FJ didn't even tell him what he wanted.

Good. He didn't deserve a nice drink.

Craig fixed his gaze, to look directly ahead of himself. "Hi, Tweek." He just needed to get that off his chest.

"Hi." Tweek was quiet. "What can I get for you?" As if only mice could hear him.

"Could I get... a caramel latte?" He couldn't even believe he was doing this for people he didn't care about, he should just turn around, turn around right now and give them their twenty bucks and move on because no one was going to stop him from leaving this place right now.

Except, Tweek was serving him. He couldn't bear to lose his eye contact.

Craig blinked a little more than usual.

"Hot or cold?"

"Hot." It was the first word he heard. "And... can I also get, ah, one of those..." He scanned the menu for the word. He didn't know how to spell it. A few things looked familiar, but he was almost sure he found it. "A... mah-chee-ah-toe...?"

"Macchiato," Tweek pronounced softly.

"Right. One of those. Hot, too, I guess..." Looking at the menu again, he noticed prices. "What? Macchiatos are six bucks? What's it made of, the shit of Siddhartha?"

Tweek was alarmed. He dropped the sharpie he was using to write on the cups and shouted, "I don't make the prices!" It was a lot more worried and guilty than it was angry or defensive. "Besides, I think the shit of a Kshatriya would be more expensive than that, anyway!"

"I... suppose it would." Lamely stated. No emotion. No need for it. "How much."

"Nine sixty-seven!" Tweek said loudly, his 'OH, SHIT' mode still pumping.

"Sheesh, ten bucks for two drinks," Craig complained under his breath as he dropped the crumpled twenty on the countertop. When he was given his change, he put the whole eleven dollars and thirty-three cents into the tip jar. He didn't know whether he did it for Tweek's sake or he just did it as an excuse to spend all of their money.

He may or may not have heard Tweek utter a "thanks" on his way towards the door.

The wanted man had finished his business. If he didn't leave now, the police would come and take him away for his crimes. The saloon was empty, and a satisfying musical jingle played rhythmically along with his clinking boot spurs. He turned around, tipped his cowboy hat and left.

Except, this wanted man actually stopped before touching the door handle. He wanted to turn around and stay here and not go back to serve his co-workers expensive coffee. He wanted to turn around, turn around right now because no one was going to stop him from staying at this place.

He set the two hot drinks on a table and sat down with the most disgruntled of disgruntled expressions on his face.

Like he imagined, the "saloon" was now empty. It was nearing brunch time and most people were finished with their caffeine intakes. Off to work and places they probably didn't want to be.

The remaining bartender - barista - whatever Craig was calling him now - was the only other person in the room. With no one to serve, he was opening a nearby garbage disposal. Very carefully, he was handling the bag, with rubber gloves on and all. He was pinching the end of the garbage bag with his middle finger and thumb, like it was going to bite him.

"I don't want to go back."

Tweek froze. His light grasp on the bag loosened even more so. "Ah! Are you talking to me?"

Craig leaned back in the chair. Holding his arms out to present his surroundings, he rose his thick eyebrows. The thought of caterpillars briefly brushed Tweek's mind as he noticed them. "Is there anyone else around?"

Tweek's thinner eyebrows went awry about his face, as he frantically rotated his head in every direction. "No...? Is there? God, is this some sorta trick question?" He didn't _see_ anyone, but that could have meant anyone could have been hiding under the tables to scare him, or maybe someone was in the bathroom with no toilet paper and he couldn't come to their rescue.

"No, I _was_ talking to you—"

"Don't mess with my head like that, man! It's bad enough I hardly noticed _you_ in here, you know!"

"Am I that tough to notice?"

"You were quiet!"

A hush fell between them. They just looked at each other, expecting the other to come up with something to break the silence.

"I... I'm not going back." It sounded weirder coming out of Craig's mouth than it did playing in his head. He averted his attention to the tabletop, which was sprinkled with grains of sugar that itched at his elbows.

"Oh." From this, Tweek concluded that Craig would not be leaving. Where ever he was supposed to be, he wasn't sure. He was almost afraid to ask, "Where?" But, it slipped out.

"Two doors down. I got this coffee for some people at work, and..."

"Why?"

And then Craig didn't know how to answer. He sat in his thoughts for a while before answering, "I don't know."

Tweek then sat down across from him. He took off his gloves. He didn't have anything to say, but maybe Craig could save him from having to take the garbage out back—no, that wouldn't work. The trash wasn't going anywhere. And from this point, the two were simply parallel. They could have been playing Battleship or chess with the intensity of their warm-to-cold eye contact—and neither of them knew why.

"What are you... _looking_ at?" It was Tweek.

Craig wasn't at all taken out of his trance. Long after the question was asked, he snapped out of it. "Oh," he said lowly, scratching ever the same spot on his neck, "nothing." _Your cheekbones are insane. _"So how are you? How's school?"

This was already a horrible, horrible conversation.

"I'm fine! School is fine!" Craig didn't quite believe him. 'Fine' didn't even begin to cover it for this guy. 'Fine' might cover it for Craig, if he was lying. 'Fine' might be something Craig would have to pay if Tits was parked in the wrong spot at the wrong time on a Tuesday. Today was Tuesday, but Craig didn't even consider getting up to move Tits' ass.

No matter the context, _fine_ wouldn't do it for him, after years and years of responding with the lone word and knowing it never actually meant what it was supposed to mean.

"Fine?" he said, with the most interrogative tone he could muster. "Fine, like, _how_ fine?" Craig internally asked himself if he sounded creepy right now. His sudden change in the pitch of his voice helped him decide that, yeah, he probably did sound a little creepy right now. He was leaning closer, only kind-of bringing up his eyes in this expression he'd never tried before. His eyebrows went higher, and, God, it was always the eyebrows. He never did _not_ look pissed, and Tweek couldn't say it was the most inviting face to be talking to.

That was when Tweek started to fiddle with the small piece of paper that wrapped around the napkin holding a knife and fork. And _that_ was when Craig noticed that there were even knives and forks at the table in the first place - didn't they only have coffee? They had little cakes and stuff, too, but...

Perhaps there was more to this establishment than Craig remembered.

Impulsively, Tweek started to fold the rectangular piece of paper, in a seemingly random manner. "F-Fine, like... Like when you... know everything is balanced and, and there isn't anything wrong happening, but not right either, you know, man? Fine!"

"Well, isn't that fine."

Tweek wasn't looking at him. He was still folding the paper. "Fine, yes, fine, fine, fine..." he murmured so lowly, Craig couldn't hear him.

"What."

"Nothing!" He shot up again.

The word "fine" was beginning to lose its meaning here.

Tweek started folding again, ripping small pieces off. The very faint noise of his fingers creasing the paper was almost breaking through the silence, but it was overtaken by the patter of rain on the glass windows. The sun was beginning to hide behind the dark grey blotches that were clouds, and the rain was pushing, forcing the orange leaves to stick and border around the rims of the windows, like some sort of school bulletin board border, so Craig thought.

Craig touched the drinks. They were still warm. He wasn't going to give these to those douches, so he carefully inched one of them in Tweek's direction, but before he could say, "You can have it," he heard Tweek say, "Lucy is afraid of rain."

He had Craig's attention back. "What," he said, "who's Lucy."

"Lucy," Tweek said, putting down the paper and then actually looking at Craig, "is my dog."

"You have a dog."

"She's a puppy!" Tweek suddenly exclaimed, "but I can't walk her in the rain. She hates it. I bet she's scared right now. I should go take care of her right now but I can't. I hope she can live off the kibble without me, but what if she runs out? What if I didn't fill it to the top this time or maybe she has water, but no food, or, or food, but no water? I've had her for a couple of weeks, but I can't help but think sometimes, I don't want to leave her alone, and—"

"Here." Craig finally pushed the drink close enough just to touch Tweek's crossed arms.

"I can't drink that!"

"Why not."

"You paid for it!"

True, this may have been, but if Craig could care less about who paid for it or who it was even meant to be for or what Brahmin's remains it may have been made out of. He was here right now.

"And isn't it for someone else?" Tweek asked.

"Yeah, well, I don't really care anymore." Craig had given him the macchiato. _Guess that means I get the gayer drink of the two._ "Just fucking take it."

"Okay! Okay, okay..." Tweek sipped it. Even though it tasted like guilt from the fact that it was supposed to be someone else's, it was creamy and well-done, so he had thought he'd done a pretty good job.

"And... I guess I can understand," Craig clung onto the previous conversation, "I had a pet once."

"You did?" Tweek put down the drink. "I mean, you did! Wasn't it like, a hamster or something?"

"A guinea pig," Craig pressed. "He was a guinea pig."

"Oh, oh, right, yeah..." Tweek felt wronged. At least he was close.

Craig then sipped his own latte, and he couldn't decide whether it tasted good because it was supposed to belong to someone else he didn't like, or it was just _good_. "I would leave him alone with a bowl of pellets and I would come back, and they would be all gone. He was a little fattie."

"Oh," said Tweek, who went back to his paper folding. "That's... cute."

"He was," Craig confirmed. "He was super cute."

"What happened to him?"

"He died," Craig said, shrugging, "on my birthday."

"Oh, God!" Tweek burst up yet again, "I'm sorry! Jesus, that must have been awful!"

"It was. It was awful. My mom said I would get a new one but I never did."

Tweek didn't know what to say now. He didn't know whether to pity him, or what, but Craig looked entirely without emotion (except for maybe his eyebrows again, but those were mad by default), so he then decided, talking to Craig was hard. Not that any social situation wasn't hard, but Craig was a challenge.

Tweek's thoughts were broken when Craig spoke again.

"My roommate is harder to take care of than any animal." He smirked. "I wouldn't get another pet now."

Tweek just nodded while he was folding the paper, which looked to be getting a lot smaller. "I didn't get Lucy up until recently... and I really kind of needed her." If Craig wasn't in the room, one would think Tweek was talking to himself, or to the piece of paper. "I was lonely."

Craig nodded, though Tweek couldn't see. Idly thinking about how good that drink really was, he then asked, "Why Lucy?"

"Why did I... name her Lucy?"

"Yeah."

Tweek put down the paper again, and curled his fingers over the lid of his drink. "Did you ever read _Peanuts_?"

"Did I ever read _Peanuts_? Do I look like I haven't been alive for twenty-one years?"

"Um, sort of? No, um, you look your age! I, I was just asking..."

"Yeah, yeah, read _Peanuts_, what about it?"

"Remember Lucy?"

"You named her after _Peanuts'_ Lucy?"

"Yeah, kind of, um, you know how when Lucy holds the football out to Charlie Brown, and then he tries to kick it but she always pulls it out of the way and he always falls and he never really gets a chance to really kick the football? And then, then Lucy just like, laughs, and—"

"Wait, wait, what. Slow down a little, would you?"

"Never mind. Never mind..." Tweek shook his head. He pinched the tiny folded paper between his fingers and placed it in his right palm. He held it out to Craig. "Look," he said softly, "I made a frog."

Craig just stared. It was, in fact, a legit origami frog. Tweek put it down on the table and placed his index finger on the top fold. Pressing down firmly, the paper frog hopped a short distance across the table.

Tweek's lips curved upward into a small smile. "You try," he said.

Craig did the same. It didn't hop as far as it had before. But when Tweek looked at him, grinning a sort of grin that belonged on the kind of man that knew how to make paper frogs, Craig smiled back, grinning a sort of grin that belonged on the kind of man that was completely and utterly, eternally, fascinated with the man in front of him.

Tweek was simply fascinating.

* * *

_**Clyde Donovan **__is playing Robot Unicorn Attack!_

_"AAAAALWAYS_ I wanna _BEEEE_ with you, and make _BELIIIIEVE_ with you, and live in HARMONY, HARMONY, OH, _LOOOOOVE_!"

Oh, it was magical. His dreams were coming true. And he didn't even have to leave his apartment.

("Melting the _iiiice _for meeee, jump into the oceeeean...")

Two people had liked his Facebook status. Two people! That's twice the amount that had liked his last status. He was taking note of his high scores on an orange post-it. The highest score would be his next status. He knew bitches loved high scores. He'd even connect his brand new Twitter account to his Facebook, so he'd gain new followers - he had a total of thirteen friends, and he was waiting on dozens of requests to be accepted.

("When it's _coooold, _out_siiiide_, am I _heeeere_, in _vaaaa_—")

And there went the vibrations.

Clyde wanted to believe it was a phantom vibration - the feeling when he thinks his phone is vibrating at his side, but the phone isn't even on him at all. _Can't talk, making my wishes come true right now,_ he'd think. But when he exploded for a third time, he succumbed and realized he did actually receive a text message.

_**From: Craig  
1:03 PM  
**__Stop playing Robot Unicorn Attack and go the fuck to class._

Clyde began to type.

_**To: Craig  
1:03 PM  
**__but i'm making my wishes come truuuue_

_**From: Craig  
1:04 PM  
**__I wish you'd put on pants and go to class. Don't leave the stove on when you leave. Lock the door and make sure you close the refrigerator. _

_**To: Craig  
1:04 PM  
**__okay mom_

_**From: Craig  
1:05 PM  
**__That's Mr. Mom to you._

The conversation could have lasted for eons, but Clyde slid his phone shut before he could irritate Craig in any way. He decided to play _one_ more time before he updated his status with his high score.

("Open your _eeeeyes_, I _seeee..._ your eyes are _opeeen..._")

His final score was thirty-three thousand, two hundred and sixty-seven.

Bitches love high scores.

Now, it was nearing time to go. He slammed his laptop shut and stuffed it into his bag, along with other assorted materials he was kind of sure he needed for class. He took the bus fare quarters out of the fridge, where Craig had left them. He also took a small yogurt to snack on, but upon realizing it was over-liquefied, he threw it out and cleaned out his mouth by attempting to stick his entire face under the faucet.

He made sure the fridge door was completely shut, the stove was off, and dashed out the door, locking it behind him - everything Mama Craig told him to do. Everything was going better than expected.

He made it to the bus stop in one minute and eighteen seconds flat, and waited it for him to take him to a day of productivity. He flipped his phone out and was ecstatic to see how many friend requests had been accepted - this made seventeen friends. Seventeen people to see his high score on Robot Unicorn Attack. He was even more happy to see the glowing sentence before him: _**Jimmy Valmer**__, __**Bradley Biggle **__and __**Wendy Testaburger **__like this._

He never took his eyes off his phone on the ride to the school.

He arrived. He had to find a sidewalk and shuffle through the backside of the buildings, avoiding delivery trucks and the security guards on their golf carts.

Well, he had a little time. He thought he was late. Turns out the class was later than he thought - _damn you, Craig, and your mind games. I could be playing Robot Unicorn Attack right now. _

With this extra time, he could have gone to the many places that this college had for him to loaf around in. There was the library, which was surprisingly nice. There were a lot of books, but who the hell reads books anymore? He wanted a computer, but they were all taken. There were even assholes at the scanner/printer-only computers, updating their Facebook statuses with some gay-ass Hinder lyrics.

Lucky he came prepared with his laptop. There were some desks by a wall, over by the books among books and more books, and they looked promising. They had two chairs on either side, meaning he could share these table with other people. But there was at least a single person at each of the tables, and he didn't feel adventurous enough to try and share one.

_What if they sneak a peek at my screen and criticize my taste in porn? Can't have that._

There were also these chairs in this sort of open area, the kind of chairs that are usually found in Harbucks, that are minimally comfortable for about an hour and then your ass begins to hurt, and then you leave only to make room for another hipster with his ultra vegan nonfat soy gingerbread latte frappe. Because that's how Harbucks does their thing.

But he just wanted to check his e-mail (and more than likely, his Facebook), so he went to sit down where ever he pleased because he stopped caring two seconds ago.

He booted up his laptop and realized he should have changed his desktop before leaving the house. Whoops.

_Whoever manages the WiFi here, _Clyde thought, _is technologically handicapped and deserves to be slapped._ Because of his WiFi troubles, by the time he finally connected, it was time to go to class.

He jogged past some artsy-fartsy buildings, by some new-age-deco water fountain that is covered in graffiti penises, and a handful of people who are clearly ignoring the "no smoking" signs.

Excellent. He made it to class. Everyone was already there, and when he walked in, they turned and looked at him like he had jizz on his face.

_What the fuck, assholes, I'm here for the same reason you are._

The teacher was late. He found an uncomfortable seat in the back. It was a rather cheap set-up - the chairs are flimsy, like the ones he sat in in Kindergarten, and every table had a leg that was just shorter than all the rest, so whenever he moved his elbow or hand or when he even _blinked_, it wiggled, and the person he was sharing it with glared at him and he just wanted to elbow that guy in the face.

With a chainsaw.

There was stuff on the whiteboard. It might have been math or some English or the secret to solving world hunger, but he couldn't goddamn read it. It was actually left over from the class that used this room before his.

His teacher finally showed up, and he was about as excited to be here as Clyde was. He can't blame him. Clyde wondered who woke up one day and decided, with a shit-eating grin on their face, "I'm going to teach community college. It is my destiny."

Everyone there was either fresh out of high school or two hundred years old. And he hated them all, and he thought about making a bitter Facebook status about these sorts of people, but he decided against it, only to keep his high score up there for that much longer.

There was that bitch at the far end who was always popping her gum and twirling her hair and texting her boyfriend of the week. Then there was this crazy Wiccan dyke who wants to become a masseuse, and Clyde wondered, who was going to let her hands on their bodies?

Then there were some jocks who just couldn't cut it for the talent hunters and failed algebra one too many times to get a scholarship. He was just there because he wants to bone that gum-popping bitch.

There were also a couple of those creepy emo-looking guys that made Clyde think he shouldn't come in tomorrow to avoid the bloodbath.

Everyone else wasn't that interesting and he didn't want to really get to know any of them.

The teacher got to work on what he was paid to do. Apparently, this class was English 101, and Clyde was enthralled to hear about basic grammar and sentence structure and the proper use of semi-colons, all the things he was too lazy to remember. But these were the things he learned in first grade, and apparently everyone else in this class must have been absent during that lesson, because they didn't know a goddamn thing.

_I might as well kill them all before the emo kid does._

At this point, despite his usual academic failure, he suspected he was smarter than the teacher. There was no motivation here.

And now, thank God, class was over. He was hungry. Didn't bring a lunch. Fortunately, he could go to the cafe and buy a seven-dollar cheeseburger.

It was just like his high school cafeteria, only slightly bigger and there was no one there except for him and some dicks singing along to some gay-ass Hinder song, which he would join in on if he A, knew the words, or B, liked Hinder in the first place.

He got his seven-dollar cheeseburger and greasy cold fries and four-dollar Gatorade and an additional two-dollar cookie because he figured he'd been a good boy. He found a seat, and he was just about to whip out his iPod to drown out Hinder when some fuck in a baseball cap walked up. He was eating a salad and already he decided he didn't like this guy because he was trying to make him feel fat.

Turned out, Clyde when to high school with him and he used to be in his math class in whatever year he probably failed, but he never noticed because he was usually asleep while his teacher (who had no personality and looked like a serial killer) droned on about formulas he wouldn't ever need to use in his life.

_Well, if I'm taking astrology, then math would be pretty important... wait, isn't it astronomy? Astrology is that zodiac shit. Sucks, I would look great in one of those sick fortune teller turbans._

This guy turned out to be Bridon. He went on about what he'd been doing lately, in between bites of his awesome hipster vegan salad that his perfect-ass girlfriend made for him from vegetables she grew in her perfect-ass garden, and Clyde just wanted to slap Bridon and tell him he was a fag, but he listened and tried to stay awake while he ate his greasy burger like a Fatty McButterchubs.

For a minute, he panicked because it was Tuesday and he had astronomy on Tuesdays, and he was late. Then he remembered it was actually Wednesday and his next class wasn't for another two hours.

Bridon finished his salad and got up to leave, telling Clyde that he couldn't wait for his singing class that night, and how he struggled to fit it in between pottery and swimming aerobics.

"My Tuesdays are totally booked, man. But you know, it has just brought me and Heidi closer than ever."

"Yeah, that's great... wait, it's Tuesday?"

"Yeah, bro."

_Shit._

Before exiting the scene, he called to Bridon that he'd add him on Facebook. He snatched up his shit and packed it, throwing away his tray into the garbage with such a slick move that it would have gotten him the gold if trash-tossing was an Olympic event. He regretted having one of those side-laptop bags, because even if it was on sale, and had a sweet Nike decal, it banged against his knees and his ass and made his shoulder ache. But he persevered.

He was shuffling down the hall in this half-jog, thinking he probably looked pretty stupid right now. His pants were falling as he tried to adjust his bag strap while walking. He held onto a belt loop and pulled them up, then, looking behind him to make sure that no one he knew was around to see him do that, he swore a wall had materialized in front of him and cause him to be knocked on his ass.

There was some dick in his way, and now they were both on the floor picking up their shit. Well, Clyde was fine, and he wanted to blurt something profane and rude but he only found it in himself to shout, "Sorry!" Like the nice guy that he was.

The person he knocked over, had a lot more things to pick up than he did. There were two books, both of which were particularly thick, and a pair of glasses that the kid was on his hands and knees for. Also, there was a small orange tin. With big, blue eyes, and when Clyde looked at it long enough, he finally deciphered, _it was a ghost from Pac-Man!_ How exciting, for it looked to be filled with candy.

In addition to these smaller things, two large things seemed to be standing out. On the kid's back, there was a raging, in-your-face instrument case. On his belt, there seemed to be what looked like a lightsaber.

A fucking lightsaber.

This was just one of those nerdy kids Clyde didn't want to run into. Well, he _did_ enjoy the Star Wars movies, but not enough to carry around a prop from the damned thing. The kid wasn't saying anything, nothing Clyde could hear, at that. He was murmuring as he picked up his glasses, and stuffed the ghost tin into his pocket.

And Clyde didn't even have a chance to help the guy with his things, because when he picked up his nerdy stuff in his nerdy arms he went his nerdy way.

"Hey!" Clyde called back as he was walking, "where are you going?"

The kid stopped, and he looked to his left and right to see if this was directed at anyone else. He then turned a one-eighty and said, "Class?"

"No 'sorry?'" Clyde trotted closer.

"I said sorry!" The other shouted defensively.

"I didn't hear you."

"Well, _sorry_," the taller of the two said bitterly. "Thanks for helping me pick up my stuff, too." Sarcasm. Clyde could play that game, too.

"You are _welcome_!" he said.

The other kid huffed and turned back around.

This was the point where Clyde was put in an even worse mood, and considered updating his Facebook status about it. He opened his phone and went directly to the application to inform his "friends."

_**Clyde Donovan **__just bumped into some guy in the hallway, not even an apology! rude :(_

When he got to his next class, which was incidentally all the way across campus in a building he couldn't pronounce the name of, and up three floors with elevators that never worked, he found some dick had locked the door. So he had to wait until the teacher came to open it and let him in and give him a look that told him that he will never accomplish anything and end up teaching community college until he dies.

He sat in the back, again, for a good while until his phone began to buzz.

Happy day, someone had commented on his status.

_**Kevin Stoley **__I swear I said sorry, dude._

Wait.

He looked up. Across the room, the same greasy-haired kid was looking down at his phone.

Clyde commented back.

_**Clyde Donovan **__dude are you in astronomy right now_

Three, two, one, _buzz._

_**Kevin Stoley **__Yes?_

_**Clyde Donovan **__don't look behind you_

And alas, the one called Kevin looked behind him. Clyde waved. Kevin whirled back around.

_**Kevin Stoley **__Well, what do you know. _

_**Clyde Donovan **__nice light saber man_

_**Kevin Stoley **__Thanks. _

_**Clyde Donovan **__didn't even recognize you_

_**Kevin Stoley **__I get that a lot._

_**Clyde Donovan **__it's the glasses. you didn't wear them before_

_**Kevin Stoley **__I lost my contacts. But I think my specs are pretty sweet._

_**Clyde Donovan **__didn't help you see where you were going_

_**Kevin Stoley **__You were the one who was pulling a wedgie._

_**Clyde Donovan **__i swear nobody saw that_

_**Kevin Stoley **__My specs don't lie._

_**Clyde Donovan **__dude how are we even fb friends_

_**Kevin Stoley **__Everyone is friends with everyone. By the way, your RUA high score. Nice one. Mine is 83,018._

_**Clyde Donovan **__man are you serious. suck my dick_

_**Wendy Testaburger **__You guys, stop commenting! I keep getting notifications. :(_

_**Clyde Donovan **__UNLIKE THE STATUS THEN _

_**Kevin Stoley **__Now, that's no way to talk to a lady. I thought you were smoother than that._

_**Wendy Testaburger **__Thank you, Kevin. :)_

_**Clyde Donovan **__:'(_

That was when Kevin pocketed his phone.

Clyde put away his own. The conversation was over, and maybe he'd inquire Kevin about a Robot Unicorn Attack showdown after class.

He stayed awake through the whole course, only daring to daydream of his future career of some super important astronomer, which involved him saving the world from a giant meteor to a sweet soundtrack by Linkin Park.

Old Linkin Park, not new Hinderbutt Linkin Park.

Before he could even finish his daydream, the class ended.

He thought it was amazing that he spent more time here than he did at his high school, but still could only get half as much shit done. He packed his things to leave, and as fast as possible so he could catch Kevin and talk about them unicorns. But when he looked up from his packing, Kevin was gone.

Clyde wandered across the campus to the bus stop, which was now so empty that it made him think his serial killer math teacher was gonna run up and disembowel him.

When he made it onto the bus in a cold sweat, he sunk into a deep depression.

_Why are you here? Why didn't you apply to proper colleges like everyone else you know? Like Token? Why did you eat that burger? Is it because you danced too close to the punch bowl at your eighth grade prom and had to stand outside in the cold waiting for your mom to pick you up and you smelled like booze and she asked if you had been drinking and even when you told her no and the punch bowl had been spiked she grounded you for three weeks and you went home and ate twenty-seven lemon bars?_

For a while, he tried to remember if there were any cliffs on this route that he could have convinced the bus driver to drive off of and put him out of his misery. But there weren't. Any large land formations were at least a couple hours' drive away in any direction, and it just wasn't worth it. There was leftover Easy Mac at home and he knew his roommate would be dead in ditchwater without him.

Oh, well. He'd be back next time and do it all over again.

* * *

_It was easily past eleven in the evening, and the boys' bodies were aching with sleep deprivation, greasy food consumption and test tastes of adult partying. But those were the minor of the reasons their bodies were aching - they were jumpy and excited, and not just from the triple servings of soda they inhaled - it was Saturday, they were alone in Clyde's parents' car, and the music was blasting. The boys' fathers had taken the two to Hooters for the airing of UFC fights, wings and boobies, as well as to celebrate a sort of "moving up" ceremony from Raisins. Though, when they realized there were about thirty men for every pair of boobs there, they began to grow bored and resorted to chilling in an air-conditioned car._

_Both the driver's seat and the passenger's seat were reclined back to one-eighty-degree angles, giving the two twelve year-olds the freedom to sprawl their bodies across the entire area of the car and hop about on their knees with youthful adrenaline. _

_The foggy windows were still closed, and tinted from the outside - one can only imagine what these two male pre-teens were capable of in this compact car, parked in the center of a parking lot with almost no other cars around. _

_"You, you know what this bird crap stain looks like, Craig? Craig? You know what this bird crap stain looks like?" There tended to be much repetition in Clyde's speech over the booming music - and he just couldn't help it in general when he was this giggly. _

_Craig was still snorting and trapping in laughter from a ten-minute old joke. "What?" he chuckled._

_"It, it looks like a dick," Clyde said, pointing to the white stain on the window with his index finger. He touched it, creating an outline of the penis he saw in the abstract stain. His finger left a streak on the window with the small swirls of his fingerprint. _

_Craig leaned over and tried not to completely squish Clyde's face with his palm as he set it on the other seat for support. He squinted his eyes at the stain and burst out into another fit of laughter. "Oh, my god, you're right, it does!" _

_"That bird must have been like, an artist," Clyde retorted. _

_"I know, right?" Craig agreed quickly and loudly. The radio had halted its 80's hair band song binge, and resorted to advertisements in which men spoke inhumanely fast. Clyde tried to imitate the voices, but often ended his attempt with a "bleh" and stuck out his tongue. _

_Craig leaned forward and turned down the volume on the radio, as the voices annoyed him to no end. However, Clyde's attempt at being a radio announcer sent him into another fit of laughs that was half from Clyde's inability to speak so quickly and some other-other joke from like twenty minutes ago. Craig just liked thinking of it - he liked thinking of the great moments he did share with his best friend, even while those moments were still in motion. _

_Now, the two of them were lying on their backs, staring out the open sunroof. The stars were clear in the sky due to the minimal city lights in the town of South Park. There was a calm hush between the boys, aside from the tinny voices coming from the radio speakers. _

_Craig wouldn't stand the silence. He arched over to Clyde's side slightly and slapped him on his forehead, with a loud skin-to-skin smack bellowing between the closed walls of the car. _

_"Owwie!" Clyde cried on impulse, "what was that for?"_

_"It doesn't matter," Craig said, "it's in the past."_

_"Yeah, but it still hurts," Clyde groaned. _

_"Yes, the past can hurt, but the way I see it... you can either run from it," he sat up, "or learn from it."_

_Clyde began to laugh again. "Dude," he said, "isn't that from like, the Lion King?"_

_"Fuck yeah," said Craig. He dropped backwards again, putting his hands behind his head comfortably. "Rafiki's such a badass motherfucker."_

_"I know." Clyde yawned._

_Craig seconded the yawn and they proceeded to lie in silence; that only lasted until they both heard a familiar, soft piano intro come from the radio. They both shot each other a look of excitement, of toothy smiles and eye glints that could be deciphered as, "Aw, dude, this is our song." Craig was the first to shoot up from his position and turned that shit up to eleven. No negotiations were held when they both rolled down the windows and belted out their summer song._

_"JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL, LIVING IN A LOOONELY WOOORLD! SHE TOOK THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHEEERE..." _

_Clyde stood up, with his feet standing on both seats (nearly stepping on Craig, but Craig dodged his foot smoothly and crouched farther back into the car), and poked his head through the sunroof by the time the chorus came along. Craig was smiling a bigger smile than he could ever remember himself smiling in his lifetime as Clyde told the population of South Park, "don't stop believing." Both Clyde and Craig held onto their feelings for the moment and were reminded that this, this was why they were friends in the first place. One would wonder, that with all the things Craig could call Clyde - annoying, stupid, annoying (Craig couldn't even think of a third word as the other two were so universal) - if Craig didn't even like Clyde. That's what most people thought. Clyde just followed Craig around all the time, and Craig just followed Clyde around because he wasn't Cartman or Stan or whoever the hell else Clyde was remotely cooler than. In simple terms, really, they got along. They got along with messy conversations and similar music interests and the fearlessness of belting out songs in cars. Craig wouldn't do that with anyone else. Clyde got Craig to speak, to sing, to feel alive._

_Clyde inhaled the thick summer air surrounded him as a slight breeze wisped past his skin. He felt buzzed and energized, and his chest heaved for breath after singing his heart right out of his soul. _

_When the song faded into radio static and overproduced commercial voices, Clyde slithered down back into the car and fell backward, landing his head on Craig's lap. Clyde's head twitched in hesitation, because of his initial expectation that Craig would hit him in the head and tell him to get off and call him a fag. Craig didn't say anything, and Clyde comfortably kept his head in its spot. _

_Craig shifted a little, and Clyde received it as a signal for him to get off, though Craig was still silent. _

_Clyde sat up, eying the steering wheel from his corner. "I wish I could drive," he said._

_Craig only huffed in response, but then the statement finally processed. "Me too."_

_"Then we could go, like, everywhere," Clyde said excitedly, "like Vegas and LA and Canada and Mexico and Australia."_

_"Australia's all the way on the other side of the earth, douchemaster."_

_"Well, I'm not so good with geometry."_

_"You mean geography?"_

_"I'm not good with that, either." The chubbier of the two pouted. Craig smirked as he climbed over to sit in the driver's seat. He set the chair upright again, and held a grip on the steering wheel. He stared ahead with an expression of focus. Clyde arched a brow at him. "What are you doing?"_

_"I'm gonna try driving," Craig said._

_"What." Clyde hopped into the shotgun seat and pulled the seat adjuster - the seat shot up a lot quicker than he would have hoped, and the headrest smacked him in the back of his neck. "Oww_—"

_"What do I put it in, D, for drive?" Craig asked, one hand on the gear shift._

_The seat clicked in position. Clyde rubbed the skin on the back of his aching neck. "You're seriously gonna do it?" _

_"Well, yeah. I've driven Go-Karts. It won't be that hard. I can at least get it into the parking space across from us." He rose a hand, gesturing to the row of empty spaces against a high, white concrete wall. _

_"Well, dude, it's my parents' car and if anyone's driving it, it should be me, you know?" He began to lean over slightly to the driver's seat, but Craig slapped him away. Clyde squeaked._

_"No, you can't drive your own parents' car, 'cause you'll be in deep shit if you trash it."_

_"So, you're saying that you intend on trashing my parents' car?"_

_"No, I'm saying that there's a better chance of you trashing your parents' car and being in deep shit than _me_ trashing your parents' car and being in deep shit."_

_"So, you're saying that you'd rather have yourself in deep shit than have me in deep shit."_

_Craig dropped his head onto the steering wheel and closed his eyes. He let out a breath and thought to himself that he's secretly always wanted to rest his forehead on a steering wheel when someone said something stupid. With his desire fulfilled, he sat up again and looked at Clyde. "No, Clyde, what I'm _saying_ is that if I drive, neither of us will probably be in deep shit."_

_"Then I swear to God you better not put us in deep shit," Clyde said. "I don't know what I'd do if you did."_

_"Well, don't worry about it, because we're not," he assured his best friend, who was more than suspicious of what Craig was intending to do, and even more frightened of what was going to happen. _

_Craig stabbed the radio knob, a hush falling over the car. Clyde reached over to his right and brought the seatbelt across his chest this time - something he never, ever did. He always put the front strap behind his back so it wouldn't dig into the skin on his neck. This time, he needed to take extra precautions. He breathed in and out._

_Craig did the same._

_With the gear in drive, and one foot on the gas pedal, Craig held the steering wheel and knew he could nail this shit. And if he didn't, whatever happened, happened. Stuff just happens, and you can't control it. They're players on the stage of life and all that crap, and everything he ever learned in his short little life briefly brushed his mind before he stepped on the gas pedal._

_And that was very briefly. Before he could finish thinking, or before Clyde could finish screaming, "We're going to fucking die," they couldn't see ahead of themselves, and they couldn't hear over the alarms, the ringing, or the crash. _

_It happened too fast to think, too fast to realize and too fast to stop. It had happened slow enough for Clyde's hysterical bawling to be the primary thing noticed about the scenario, other than the fact that the frontal headlights and engine were crushed and destroyed, and now partially becoming a part of the wall they crashed into. Their heads were throbbing from the shock of the noise, the jolting and the banging. Both of their chests felt stabbed and suffocated from the large airbags that shot like bullets from the dashboard, but saved their lives otherwise. _

_It was on the cab ride home that Craig finally spoke to Clyde again that night. They both decided they'd heard enough talking and yelling and arguing, what with the fathers of the two bickering about responsibilities, insurance, and each other's integrity. Temporary issues had been solved for the night. No serious injuries had taken place, which gave Craig, in particular, hope and a little more belief in a God. _

_Whatever this was going to cost for the two families was beyond the boys' knowledge and control._

_"Hey... hey, Clyde?"_

_Clyde twiddled his fingers in his lap, his face moist, his throat dry, and eyes glassy still. The only sounds he could muster were small hiccups and sniffs, and not a word left his mouth since the moment he thought he was going to die. He gulped, and cleared his throat of all the things he wanted scream at Craig and hurt him with and kill him with. "Don't talk to me," he said softly._

_"I'm gonna talk anyway," Craig said. "Well, I just wanted to say that... um... that if anything ever, ever, ever comes up, you know, if something comes up where you ever do something as incredibly stupid as I just did, I'll forgive you."_

_Clyde stopped twiddling with his fingers. He let out a breath and turned his glassy eyes towards his best friend. "Don't think I won't hold you to that."_

* * *

"You are so fucking DEAD!"

"What?—Oh, shit," Clyde stammered at the sight of the piece of paper in Craig's hand, "don't tell me you—"

"What in the fuck is this?" Craig's booming voice, along with the slam of the front door, made Clyde jump in his spot, and made him feel like he was about to shit his heart through his ass. There was one thing on his mind that could have possibly caused this rude entrance. He knew this day would come - he just forgot that it would come, the second he realized it was coming. Now that the day had arrived, he didn't know what to do, and he didn't know how to explain himself.

"Well, Craig," Clyde began. _Quick, act like you're clueless! _"What is that?"

"Great question, Clyde. I was kind of hoping you would fucking know what this is. I mean, if you could understand a word or two on this fucking piece of paper." Craig threw the paper at Clyde. Clyde waved his hands through the air in front of him in attempt to catch the paper in mid-air, but to no avail. It fluttered downwards onto the carpet, face-down. When he laid his eyes on the print, he recognized the words solely as, "You're fucked."

Clyde was expressing no emotion. He said nothing. His hands dropped to his sides and he looked at Craig in this way that Craig could only describe as retarded. "Can I see what you bought?" Clyde asked, gesturing to the convenience store bag Craig was holding in his left hand.

"Don't fucking change the subject. If you can tell me just what the fuck happened to what we were supposed to get, what, _thirty_ days ago, we can talk about you letting you see my new deodorant, which is only if I don't punch your eyes out."

"Uhh."

"Read the letter. Did you read it? Read it." Craig's eyes were narrowed at Clyde, who was visibly shaking.

Clyde turned around and read it, mumbling to the words to himself. "You are hereby given notice that hmmm... rphmph... mmf... nmmeme... you are in breach because... mehmeh... in your payment to the undersigned of the sum of—shit."

"Yeah. Shit. And, why didn't I see this before? Why do we have a month to come up with this, Clyde? What happened to the first fuckin' letter? What do you expect me to do, blow the landlord to keep a roof over our heads?"

"Are you saying _you _don't have the rent?"

"What about _you_?"

"Looks to me like you're spending your money on deodorant."

"At least I'm not spending it on Taco Bell kids' meals."

"Taco Bell doesn't even have kids' meals!" Clyde shouted.

"You would fuckin' know that, wouldn't you?"

"Everyone knows that!"

"Yeah, you and your cock. If you start fucking the fleshlight you ordered off Amazon, I'm out."

"You looked through my history!"

"Fuck yeah, I did. What are you gonna do, update your Facebook about it? That's not gonna come up with this money, is it?"

"Why do you keep thriving on this shit like it's my fault? You haven't paid shit, either!"

"Because, dear Clyde," Craig turned on some artificial sweetness, "looks to me like we would have had _more_ time to come up with this, if you hadn't fuckin' TRASHED THE FIRST WARNING!"

"I didn't trash it!"

"Oh, really, Clyde? Oh fuckin' really? Where is it then?"

"I... It's... It's in the Pile."

Craig was about to scream again, but his breath stopped. "It's... in the Pile?"

"Yeah," Clyde said, "the Pile." He gestured to the window.

The Pile—the hypothetical pile of crap that developed over time, as Craig threw things out the window out of anger. Yesterday, it had been the sausages. Weeks ago, it had been the first eviction letter that was stuck on their door, never to be seen by Craig.

"Are you... fucking... _retarded_?"

"I didn't want you to see it!"

"ARE YOU FUCKING—" Craig stopped again. He couldn't. He couldn't even speak. He couldn't even believe he was living with this son of a bitch. He wondered how Clyde could even get up in the morning and take a shit with all the stupidity clouding his brain.

"Calm down, I know it's your Pile—"

"No. Clyde. Don't even speak to me. Don't even look at me. Don't."

"We can figure this out. Dude." Clyde tried to calm him. "Bro. We can do this. We're the very best. Like no one ever was."

"What are we gonna do, Clyde? What does in the Pile, _stays_ in the Pile, and you've fucked it up. You've defiled it, and on top of that, we're in a financial shit river."

"So the Pile is more important than our financial shit river."

"No!" Craig cried, "What in the Jesus fuck are we going to do."

Clyde beamed. "Okay, man, I got this all worked out. I'll stop helpin' my dad out at the shoe store, I'll stay and GameStop, but I—get this—can do stand-up."

Craig rubbed his face in aggravation. "Comedy."

"Yeah!"

"You're not funny, Clyde. You're not going to make any money."

"What kind of attitude is that?"

"The right one," Craig said. "Look. We'll just... cut down on expenses. No more luxury. No more Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs. We're going America's Choice."

Clyde frowned at him, and buried his face in his arm as he leaned on the wall. "Not America's Choice," he whined.

"Oh, America's Choice, alright."

"Why don't you get a second job? Other than, you know, gawking at cheeseburgers all day."

"Do you mean food or people?"

"What do you _think_ I mean?"

Craig sighed. "That's not all I do." It didn't help much that Craig owed Fucking Joe twenty bucks as well as two coffees to the other kids. _I kind of shouldn't have done that. _

"I'm not gonna be the only one working in this house!" Clyde said.

"Fuck you, man, Robot Unicorn Attack is the gayest game ever."

"TAKE THAT BACK!"

"Ooh, but I already wrapped it up in a little fuckin' ribbon and gave it to you, sorry, _keep it, _cuntnugget."

_Cuntnugget_. Clyde wasn't sure he knew what that was supposed to mean. Though, what he did know, was that right now was the time to break out something he's been wanting to use for a long time. "Craig... dude. Remember when, like, you kind of crashed my parents' car?"

"No, I don't remember life-altering events in my life, why?"

"I just thought, you know, maybe, you could, like, forgive me for this and we can solve this humanely."

"_Solve this humanely?_ I'm not sure if I can fuckin' handle you throwing out an extra _thirty days_ to come up with this much cash! And did you even _talk _to the landlord, I mean—"

"YOU COST MY PARENTS FIVE TIMES WHAT WE HAVE TO PAY!"

"WE WERE TWELVE!"

"FUCK YOU, MAN, FUCK YOU."

"GO SUCK A FUCK, CLYDE."

"HOW CAN YOU EVEN SUCK A FUCK—"

"YOU'D FIGURE IT OUT."

And then there was silence.

Clyde spoke. "Okay. This'll blow over. Calm your nips, alright? We got this. Trust me."

Craig wasn't sure he could.


	3. the call of the fajita

**A/N: **OKAY I QUIT WHY DO I DO THIS LOL  
because me and everyone I know has an unhealthy obsession with these characters

I hope everyone was waiting for this. this took less than 6 months so CLEARLY I am at a new record here. i'm not as happy with this chapter as I was with the other two. it's actually quite shorter than the others AAGGGHH why. it's so dialogue heavy and probably happens too fast but that's what I get for rereading it myself. please point out any raging mistakes.

one of the main reasons I finished this was because I finished the misadventures of taco butt and robo dick exactly a year and four hours ago HAHA i'm just livin' it up. also, a lot of these ideas are well over a year old since I started with this whole houseflies thing on valentine's day. I remember the 13th and the 14th last year very vividly jfhldskj good days good days

now it's technically march 2nd and I haven't changed a bit except I stopped using those annoying emotes in my author's notes, so applaud me, I've narrowed all my emotions down to this: 8|

I have a new writing blog on tumblr, there's a a link on my profile, all my writing shit goes there, which includes the extra extra shit I do because I get way too into this

if writing the entire chapter was as easy as writing the author's note I would be so happy

okay let's cut the catchphrases ENJOY THE CHAPTER, IT'S SHORT AND HOPEFULLY FULL OF PLOTLINESS which includes certain _plot bunnies _derp

the next chapter will be huge I swear there's so many things I want to do now

* * *

**iii. the call of the fajita**

_Douchemaster_—

_THANKS FOR FUCKING US OVER. I PISSED SOMEWHERE IN YOUR ROOM. GOOD LUCK._

—_Mr. Craig Tucker_

Craig and Clyde were not on speaking terms.

Clyde woke up on Wednesday to find the note on his nightstand. It was torn off the corner of some other copy paper - when he turned it over, he saw printed words, which frightened him more than anything at the moment. Legal documents scared him more than ghosts and roaches and death and green bananas (they reminded him of unfinished business, which reminded him of ghosts) and old tacos and snarky women and broken traffic lights all put together. He didn't see anything that meant he was in trouble, but from the words remained on the ripped sheet, he recognized that the water must have been temporarily shut down throughout the building. This probably gave Craig more than one excuse to relieve himself somewhere in Clyde's room.

Clyde looked around the room for any wet spots on the carpet, any suspicious stains on his white walls. He could smell it, _ugh. _It wasn't like he could do anything about it now. It would just sit where it was, and eventually... what happens to liquid? Evaporate?

But then what happens after evaporation? Condensation? So that the walls and ceilings would be lined with the piss of Craig?

Precipitation? _When the piss of Craig rains upon thee?_

Oh, no. He'd better build an ark. It was going to rain. And hard.

He quit searching for the pee spot and went to the living room to find the rest of the notice. He confirmed that the building's water was going to be shut down until midnight, sighing because he couldn't take a morning shower or take care of his own business. He ripped off another piece of the same paper and wrote:

_Other douchemaster_—

_you pissed in my room for that? Thanks man. You can forget about me ever helping you again. Fuck off_

_Clyde_

_P.S. I'M NOT GAY!_

He thought he'd clear up any confusion.

Robot Unicorn Attack was still hot manly shit.

He left the note on the arm of the sofa, from which the bed was unfolded, unmade and overall unkempt to match the rest of the living room. Clyde assumed that Craig went on a furious rampage in the middle of the night. They didn't have many things to ruin, but the chairs were knocked over and the sheets were on the floor, and the TV was a little crooked so he must have hesitated before attempting to destroy something so crucial to their living.

Clyde readjusted the television and picked up the chairs. He didn't fold up the sofa bed because he knew that was even more of Craig's problem, and he knew he would get even more angry if he touched his bed with his "grubby fingers."

Thankfully enough, Craig didn't touch anything in the kitchen. Well, Clyde thought so. If he couldn't brush his teeth, he might as well wash down the morning stickiness with some sugared down apple juice, right?

Wrong.

The apple juice quart was empty, with a neon pink post-it stuck to the side. It read:

_I drank all the juice._

He turned it around.

_I hope my piss smells like apples._

When Clyde went back to his bedroom to put his shoes on, he discovered just where Craig had peed.

* * *

_**To: Token  
9:44 AM  
**__Are you busy today?_

Craig liked Token.

He liked Token in a different way than he liked Clyde. No one thought he liked Clyde, but he did—he did. Even though Clyde was a flake and Craig took the liberty in pissing in his shoes that morning - he knew, yeah, he knew. It was a strange form of affection, he insisted. Maliciously furious and hateful affection.

And, well, the way he liked Token was different because Token was Craig's left side as much as Clyde was his right, but not quite. They were part of a trio, and they were a bubbling concoction together, of signature purple, red and blue, that tasted bittersweet and boyish. Craig didn't like to call them the three musketeers because, goddamn, every trio they knew would call themselves that—Clyde liked to call themselves the original _Ghostbusters_. Token used to compare themselves to trio bands like Rush and ZZ Top and Green Day.

Craig, on the other hand, acted as though he was indifferent to these group nicknames—in secret, he was rather fond of calling themselves the Rowdyruff Boys.

But, yeah. He wouldn't tell them that.

Perhaps one of the reasons Clyde pestered him so much was because Token wasn't always around to set the balance. There would be no Rowdyruff Boys if there was Boomer and Butch, but no Brick (and even more importantly, there would be no Powerpuff Girls if there was Bubbles and Buttercup, but no Blossom; Craig wouldn't compare themselves to girls, though, not now and not ever).

Craig liked Token because he set balance.

His phone buzzed.

_**From: Token  
9:47 AM  
**__Oh, look who it is. I hope you remember I hate texting. Call me if you want to live._

_**To: Token  
9:48 AM  
**__I can't, I'm at work. Just answer the question, dude._

_**From: Token  
9:50 AM  
**__Tough beans, then. Call me when you're off._

Craig stuffed the phone in his pocket. Gotta keep going, gotta keep moving because he gets off at eleven today. And when it's eleven he'll go two doors down to Tweak's because he had an excuse.

That morning, Craig had stolen one of the sticky-utensil-wraps or whatever they are from one of the tables to take a shot at making an origami frog. Tweek had only showed him once, so he tried to use his Craig juju-voodoo to go back in time and replay Tweek's folding methods. And, well, it didn't work, so he did it from pure memory. In simple words, the outcome was shit.

But he wanted to show him anyway.

And when the clock did strike eleven, he nearly chucked his apron across the entire restaurant, raining straws everywhere. But instead, he threw it off like it was on fire, and hung it up like it was okay to leave a flaming apron there like that.

He jogged to Tweak's only to find that the place was overcrowded.

_Apparently_, some people decided to copy his idea of coming in and grabbing the attention of his Cheeseburger.

_Why, _he asked, _why does this happen when I actually want to be here._

He stood there at the front of the shop, contemplating whether or not he should stay - Tweek would be busy. He wouldn't want to see him, would he? Only more people are going to come in, it's freezing balls outside and they want their hot cocoa. Craig didn't even want hot cocoa, he just wanted his Cheeseburger.

No, no. Not in that way. Not now. Maybe not ever. The Cheeseburger is only for looking, not for touching.

He didn't want to stay. It wasn't worth it to show Tweek a stupid crumpled paper.

He stuck his hand in his pocket and felt the disfigured frog. He left.

He sat in Tits, Marlboro lit, dialing for Token.

Token's smooth voice was almost music to Craig's ears. "Hello?"

"Hey. Dude," Craig said. "Are you busy, yes or no."

"Well, define 'busy.'"

"Are you doing anything that may corrupt my plan of me driving to Denver to see you."

"That depends on how long you're planning to intrude my life."

Craig actually grinned. "Oh, so I'm an intruder, huh. I thought I was more of a pleasant guest that graces you with my very presence and velvety voice."

Token chuckled. "That's very beautiful, Craig. If it answers your question at all, I'm in my bed right now."

"Mr. Success sleeping on the job. Yep, wow. And I thought you were a productive one. Does this mean I can intrude?"

"Before my eight o'clock class, yes, go crazy. Is there any particular reason you decided to come up and grace me with your velvety voice, or do you just need something? Because you wouldn't have sounded like this a week ago."

"Well, you know me. Spontaneous as all hell."

"Craig Tucker is absolutely not spontaneous."

"Well, I am now... going to... spontaneously. Hang up."

And he did.

The trip to the University of Colorado in Denver was two hours without traffic. He just hoped that the same people who copied his idea at Tweak's Coffee weren't going to copy his idea of going to Denver.

Because the world does everything his way, there were copious amounts of traffic.

No. This would not work. Craig's reverie begun with Tits being a Transformer and transforming into a giant robot, respectively—one with modified muskets for arms and monster truck wheels for feet. And Tits is no longer Tits because Craig does not like Tits. Instead, Tits' transformation turned her into the great B.A.L.L.S., for **B**ig **A**wesome **L**arge **L**acerating **S**paceship, because she was part spaceship, as well. She blasts pomegranates filled with napalm because it'll push the cars out of the way like mowing daisies. Also, pomegranate stains never come out. Then the monster truck wheels morph into rocket boots and she flies over the freeway, firing her napalmegranates in rhythm with her surround sound speakers that play Journey at the same time. When Denver is in view, B.A.L.L.S. transforms again, this time into a red racecar much like that of Red Racer. Craig is suddenly in a helmet and all-inclusive racecar driving gear and he still drives with ultimate rocket power.

He makes it to the university in one piece and tries to remember where Token's dorm is.

His mind movie was over, but it killed time.

He recognized the campus and went with his gut. He didn't want to call Token and ask where it was because maybe that would have seemed un-bro-like of him.

Craig, being the bro that he was, suddenly remembered exactly where Token lived from the visit he made two weeks prior.

When Token opened the door, he was in a wifebeater and boxers. It was past one in the afternoon and Token was not dressed presentably. Craig was unsure of the circumstances, was there a holiday or something?

"Not looking too sharp, man," Craig commented as he brought him into a high five and a shoulder bump. "Whatever happened to girls going crazy for a sharp-dressed man?"

"It's hump day and I'm not doing any humping," said Token. "You're in your work clothes. Fifty-seven's." He sort of laughed at the name. "You a fry-master yet?"

"I'm the fry-keeper." Craig invited himself inside and sat on Token's (or what he presumed was Token's because of the stuffed green snake) bed. "The fry-bearer, rather."

"Because waitressing is manlier than driving a dumptruck with a bear with knives for teeth riding shotgun."

"First of all," Craig raised a finger, "it is not waitressing, second of all, that is not manly, that's frightening on a plethora of levels."

"That's why it's manly, but I guess you aren't, because it _scaaaares_ you."

"Well, _excuuuuse_ me if I don't want to get killed."

Token made a mocking face and waved his arms, mimicking Craig's "_excuuuuse _me."

Craig smirked, taking Susie, the snake, into his lap and curling her up, then wrapping her around his shoulders like a boa.

Token sat down next to him. "Where's lunkheaded birdbrain, parking the car?"

"Um, no. I... didn't take him."

"Shocker. Why not?"

Craig had this covered. "He's working."

"_Working? _Another ballbuster. You're trying to give me a heart attack." He put his hand over his chest melodramatically. He even fell back on the bed. His boxers were littered with graphic drawings of chocolate chip cookies. His bedding was plain, as was the rest of the dorm, but one thing that really made up for the less than mediocre decor (again, a result of manliness) was the "Welcome to the Batcave" banner on the closet door, which was a product of Token's currently absent roommate, Joe.

"Forgive me. I've left my defibrillator at home," Craig deadpanned. "Ha-ha," he set the record for the fakest of laughs, "you're dead."

Token stayed dead.

"Guess that's it for our social encounter." Craig stood up and made way for the door. He glanced back and Token was still lying there.

Craig reached for the doorknob and—

"OOGA BOOGA, STEAL THAT CAR, TAKE ME WHERE THE WHITE WOMEN ARE!"

"HOLY JESUS BALLS—"

Craig was beyond startled and Token had him in an intense headlock. "Tap! _Tap!_"

"No—Goddammit, my submission attribute is lower than the rest—how did you know, Congo?"

"The panthers taught me no mercy! Tap, damn you!"

"Okay, okay, I give up," Craig cried, as Token dropped him down onto the floor on his hands and knees. "_Excuuuuse_ me for not being raised in the Congo."

"You're submissive. You always gave in pretty easily." Token cracked his knuckles. "Anyway, your time is up, get out of my territory." He helped Craig up off the carpet.

"No, no, wait," Craig protested as if he took Token seriously, "I'm hungry."

"So little Craig wants me to feed him? Does he want a nice grilled cheese with a side of applesauce?"

"With the crusties cut off? Cut diagonally into four pieces of equal length?"

"And a silly straw, I know, I know. But if we're going to go out, I'll need a shower because—"

"You're a stinky fuck," Craig finished for him.

"—Because my stench is of sweat, blood and tears from the hard work I performed saving children in Tunisia. And you need a shave."

Craig touched his face. It was slightly prickly from the four or five or six o'clock shadow—he wasn't quite sure what time it showed up, but it was at some point in the morning when his anger limit was too high to exceed its boundaries. It was like he had a mental fence between indifference and fury, and it had already been knocked down by hundreds of raging, foaming-at-the-mouth German shepherds. When he found out the water had been shut off, the German shepherds went back to the wreck that was once the fence and started peeing on it. And like the German shepherds, Craig peed in the wreck that was Clyde's shoes. His stupid, flashy-ass Nike shoes he gets for free...

"The water was shut off in my building," said Craig. "I couldn't take care of anything."

"So that's why you smell like you bathed in Axe. And also why you pissed in Clyde's shoes."

"Wait. How do you know."

"He made a Facebook status about it. Read it and weep." He pointed to the Macbook that sat on a pillow—a _pillow_—on his nightstand. It was set like a precious queen. Craig went for it, but Token warned him about getting fingerprints on his "baby," and Craig flipped him off as he handled this technological baby cautiously. When he opened it, it was already tabbed to Facebook.

_**Clyde Donovan **__ok so craig peed in my shoes this morning. it's squishy and gross and now i have to burn them. thanks man you're a real bro P.S. i don't even like apple juice_

Well, the first flaw Craig found in the status was that Clyde didn't capitalize his name. Clyde doesn't normally pay attention to capitalization when typing, but Craig always told him his name was an exception and needed to be capitalized—he was just that important. The second thing he found wrong with it was the postscript—_why do statuses even need postscripts?_—that Clyde did not even like apple juice. It was an all-around lie. Clyde loved apple juice. Almost as much as he loved lime rain Gatorade.

Apparently, three people had liked the status. And that was a very vague system, which part of the status did they actually like? The fact that Craig pissed in Clyde's shoes (which they should like), or the fact that it was squishy and gross, or the fact that he has to "burn them", or the fact that Clyde referred to him sarcastically as a bro _or _the fact that he doesn't even like apple juice, which is a _lie? _He thought looking at the comments may answer his questions.

_**Wendy Testaburger **__Ew, why did he do that?_

_**Clyde Donovan **__idk he's a douche_

One person happened to "like" that comment. Oh—_it's Stan. Go figure._

_**Kyle Broflovski **__oh my God. That's the nastiest thing I've ever heard. Are you still wearing them?_

_**Clyde Donovan **__um no _

_**Kyle Broflovski **__oh, thank God. But still. that is so gross OH MY GOD._

_**Stan Marsh **__when you gotta go you gotta go_

_**Kyle Broflovski **__OH Stan. You're online, wanna go water my crops or something?_

_**Stan Marsh **__no fuck you_

Craig stopped reading after that. He was getting physically ill from this. He thought about making a comment under Token's name, but decided against it. He could just walk away. From the Internet.

Instead, he scrolled up to the top of the page. The familiar question ghosted over the white box, "_What's on your mind?"_

He typed and submitted—no regrets.

_**Token Williams **__ooga booga steal that car TAKE ME WHERE THE WHITE WOMEN ARE_

Yeah, that's right, they'll never know what hit them.

Token was still in the shower and Craig still had his baby in his hold. He went to Google to type in, out of _complete_ and _utter_ curiosity, '_Robot Unicorn Attack.'_

Looking at the dropdown list, there were many other results than _just _Robot Unicorn Attack alone. The fourth or so result read, '_Robot Unicorn Attack heavy metal.'_

This caught his eye.

He searched for just this, and the first result belonged to the domain of AdultSwim. It told him to "press Z to make his nightmares come true," and he thought, _By God, I am going to regret this._

But it was the most hauntingly magical thing he'd ever experienced.

Fire, explosions, screaming dolphins and an uprising score, all to the sounds of hardcore heavy metal? This was _way_ better than the rainbow-shitting sparkly crap that Clyde thought was so enchanting. He began screaming obscenities at it, telling those pentagons to get the fuck out of his way because he was the Swan Queen.

When Token got out of the shower, he was wet and glistening and had a clean, fluffy, white towel tied tightly around his waist. Craig was still yelling at the screen. There was a last explosion, in his final nightmare—his final score was thirty-two thousand, two hundred and seventy-two. He looked at the screen, then back to Token, then back at the screen, then back to Token.

"You look like the Old Spice guy," Craig said.

"I smell like him too," Token replied. He lifted up his arm and took a big whiff of himself. "_Mmm_, yeah."

Token had made an instantaneous transition from sloppy college kid to sharp guy-who-looks-like-he-has-a-purpose-in-life. He was wearing a white button down shirt and dark blue jeans that said, "_these pants look nice, but they'd look better on the floor_." He asked Craig whether or not he should wear a tie as well and Craig said they "weren't going on a date," and Token said, "we're not?" and proceeded to punch each other in the shoulder, and Token ended up not wearing the tie, anyway.

They agreed on cruising the city in Tits, and Token found her condition to be quite exceptionally cruddy.

"You can just move the crap out of the front seat—OH, SHIT," Craig said in a near horrified tone. "I have a bag of Milky Ways." He pulled an opened bag of Milky Ways out of the cranny between the driver's seat and the cup holders. Token questioned whether or not those would be okay to eat.

And they rode through Denver, debating places to eat and discussing the existence of the megalodon, the said-to-be extinct whale-sized shark, and what it might've eaten other than, like, everything, and how it would be funny if it was a vegetarian or something; this lead to the discussion of pomegranates, somehow or someway, and how they're dirty radishes filled with juice corn. Craig suggested sitting on the sidewalk and eating fruit from a market without paying for it, but Token was dressed for something classier than that, whilst Craig was dressed to be their own waiter.

They decided on a place not fancy enough for valet parking, not casual enough to go through the drive-through and eat fries in the car and add to the garden of fast food wrappers. The place was diner-like, nice enough to serve them bread and butter before their meal.

Craig actually received several texts from Clyde during his outing, but he was too indulged in his conversations to even so much as consider replying to them.

_**From: Clyde  
2:50pm  
**__hey man um...just call me when you get this_

_**From: Clyde  
3:01pm  
**__you alive man?_

_**From: Clyde  
3:06pm  
**__don't make me think you're dead or anything ok_

_**From: Clyde  
3:11pm  
**__ok i see. you're out having gooey sex with your "cheeseburger" so i'll just leave you forever alone now_

Craig thought that was one of the best decisions he'd ever make.

Clyde leaving him alone, not having gooey sex with his Cheeseburger.

Well. Maybe the latter. But that wasn't important right now.

Craig and Token were ordering after-meal coffee when Craig grew a pair and brought up the whole reason he'd even come out here.

"Hey, Token."

"Yes, hello, that's my name, ironically and unfortunately, how can I help you?"

"Okay, I'll tell you how you can help me. I need some—"

"_Money?_" Token leaned forward. "I knew your spontaneity was too good to be true. Way to break my heart, man, I was beginning to think you'd leave without asking for cash."

"Well." Craig shrugged. "You were wrong." His heart began to drop a bit. Token looked genuinely disappointed. He didn't think there'd be any way for him to agree to this now. Marvelous, he'd already fucked up.

"You know, I really appreciate you calling me up and taking the time to drive out here to hang out, but I don't appreciate it when you continue to take things for granted. I'm not a _bank._"

Craig fell silent. He felt he was in trouble.

"How much do you _need_?" And this question was not, as Craig hoped, a nice offering from your mom when you wanna go to the mall with your friends and get a couple of slices of pizza. This was his friend, Token Williams, prodding him for the insane amount of money he thought he was going to ask for.

"Aboutmaybeliketwehundrrr..."

"_What?_"

"About twelve hundred," Craig whispered.

"About twelve hundred," Token repeated. "Well, that's fuckin' fantastic. Look, I'm not going to dwell, for the _moment_, how much you're asking me to lend you. Why don't you have the money yourself?"

"Let me explain." Craig folded his hands in front of himself, more graceful and postured than he'd ever been. They were served their coffee. Token quietly thanked the waitress as Craig collected his thoughts. "Clyde is an idiot."

"Established, but they travel in pairs, you know."

Craig internally resented that. "We're normally supposed to be warned about an eviction ninety days in advance. _Ninety. _Apparently, we _did _get it on the ninety day mark, but it was before I was home, and Clyde was. _Clyde_, being the imbecilic moron that he _is_, threw it into the Pile and kept _me_ in the dark about it. And what do we get thirty days later. Another warning letter. Now we only have _sixty_ days to catch up on the money we owe or we're out of there."

"And how much do you owe?" Token sipped his coffee.

"Enough, okay? I just want to get this month's rent off our shoulders. We'll be a thousand down and we'll cough up the money before Thanksgiving." Craig doused his own coffee in Splenda. He looked angry at the sugar, too. He kept adding more, waiting for a response from Token.

"So you want _me_ to pay your rent because you and Clyde spend your life savings on lava lamps filled with leprechaun snot and other useless shit? If I'm your bank, would it be appropriate if I charged you interest? What do I get out of this, Tucker? What makes you so sure you'll cough up the money and not end up living on the bottom of my shoe by the end of the year? Just what in this fucking world makes you so sure, that's all I want to know."

"I'm sure because—"

"And haven't you been talking letting Clyde have the place to himself? Because of how much," Token gesticulated for exaggeration, "he _aggravates _you and all that jazz?"

"I'm _afraid_ to leave him alone by himself, dude—"

"He's not a fucking _child_."

"And you're one who calls him an lunkheaded birdbrain for a first-name basis?"

"He's not the one up here asking for twelve hundred dollars, is he?"

Craig looked at him. His own eyes were more hollow and sunken than Token's. Token's were demanding and straight-forward, interested and stern.

Craig clinked his coffee mug on the table. He pointed to the check. "Who—"

"You."

"Can you tip?"

Token turned on a snooty accent. "I'm sorry. I don't carry singles."

Craig paid in plastic. And that hurt him a little, too. Physically and financially.

The walk back to Tits was silent and awkward in that way that shouldn't have been awkward. Craig hated the word awkward, he hated the concept and the feeling, and the way his younger sister overused the word ("Oh, my God, Craig, your face is so awkward," and, "Oh, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was so awkward in that scene!"). He just did not want this walk to be "awkward", but alas, it was.

On the ride back to campus, both of them were just waiting for the other to speak up.

Token was first. "Ever think of... selling Tits?"

Craig nodded. "I don't like Tits."

"Everyone knows you don't like Tits."

Craig nodded again. They were weak nods, the kind where he would agree he did something wrong.

"Your video games? Your Wii? Do you even play that anymore?"

"Clyde says he needs it for work," Craig said. "He says he wants to try and take it apart and put it back together just to say he did."

"Well, that's not helping anyone. I'm sure he could live without one gaming system."

"Yeah." Craig gripped the wheel a little tighter. "You know, I'm—"

"Sorry? I hope so. You never did say 'please.'"

They were at a stoplight. Craig looked down at his lap. "I didn't. It's okay, though. You don't have to go and make my money any of your concern."

While Craig was looking downward, the light turned green. Token softly said, "Green," and Craig looked up again to go. Token continued. "I never did say 'no,' either."

"You're not saying—"

"I'm not saying I'm gonna give you the money and let you run. I'll give you the money. But it's going to come back and bite you in the ass later. I promise you that."

* * *

Even though working at a video game store wasn't all it was hyped up to be, Clyde's job did have its perks. On this particular day, he'd been approached by a fellow gamer with a problem. Now, it wasn't his job to play Video Game Therapy, but _this _seemed like a perfect job for him.

This little bro was stuck on a certain level of Death God Penguins from Plutarian: Pluto Strikes Back.

The kid had trotted up to him, a few inches shorter than he was. He held up the game guide, pointing to a certain picture, and said, "I'm having trouble defeating the evil tentacle monster on level sixty-four."

Clyde knew game guides couldn't always do justice. He dug into the deep catacombs of his mind to bring out his human game guide, and put his skills to use. "Actually, it's impossible to defeat the tentacle monster. You'd think that the programmers are trying to mess with us, but it's all part of the game, because it doesn't actually exist, the character is hallucinating because the mushrooms he accidentally ate on level fifty-two are warping his mind into this fake-monster-seeing juju crap. You should just take the left passageway, the one with the jellyfish, but don't touch the walls because the jellyfish are real and will sting you. There's a fake wall at the end of the corridor, just knock it down with some H-bombs. Then be mad careful, 'cause there's a bitch right after you destroy the wall. It'll just send you back to the jellyfish passage, but if you don't see it coming, you might die on impact. So just put your brakes into motion and you're good. Now, if you don't fall, you can just leap over the ditch and step through. The floor moves but there's no real threat, it just takes a long time. So then you have to go through the blue door on the north side, the third from the left, down eight flights of stairs and STOP at eight, because the ninth is man-eating sharks. Then, you have to go through a decontamination plant for exactly seventeen seconds. Any more and your skin will start to melt, any less and you'll poison everyone. Then you have to grab a ride on a mutant turtle and avoid the sea anemones. You have to get to the top level, and you'll be tempted to climb the anemones, but don't. The turtle has wings but you have to feed him the purple potion from level sixty-two. He'll fly you up to the platform, then you just gotta do a simple Schiezenherg maneuver and go through the bamboo curtain and you're set."

The kid looked like he just got the education of his life.

But then someone stepped in.

"_Actually_," this guy said, "the _easier _way to do it is if you _do _go down to the ninth flight of stairs. But you're not supposed to open the door. To the right there's a rock that you can move to find a green switch, and it'll take you to a different turtle that doesn't need the purple potion, and you can go right through the bamboo curtain." The guy smiled slyly, not even hiding the pride he had in this knowledge.

"Well." Clyde leaned on the counter. "I was going to tell him that, too. Until you stole my thunder."

Kevin gazed down at his fingernails—quite stubbed down from biting, packed with gunk and dirt, actually—and replied, "If you were going to tell him, you would have done so a lot sooner before going through the trouble."

"Well, I'm sure my detailed walkthrough helped him enough as is, right?" He looked at where the kid was standing. He wasn't even there anymore, so Clyde assumed that his own verbal guide was enough for that kid to move on with level sixty-four. He played a hero today. _Bzz. _

"Looks more like it bored him. Godspeed to that child." He only nodded in some general direction he imagined the kid to have walked in, but there was really no one there. He turned back to Clyde. "Fancy meeting you here."

"It's my job to be here," said Clyde. "Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Can you do your job and... ring up this belt buckle for me?" Kevin was already holding a metal contraption in his hand. He put it on the counter, and Clyde examined it thoroughly before actually ringing it up. It was a _Ghostbusters_ belt buckle, the classically unmistakable logo.

"A 'please' would suffice, thank you very much, Stoley."

"And a 'sorry' would suffice from yesterday's collision, Donovan."

The scanner went _beep_ and Clyde said, "Sorry for knocking over your killer nerd shit. That'll be," he rose a pinky to the corner of his lip, "one _million_ dollars." He pursed his lips and cocked an eyebrow—well, he tried to—eyebrow acrobatics were never a profession of his.

Kevin laughed. "Nice try." He put a twenty on the counter.

Upon giving him his change, Clyde finally decided to comment on the buckle itself. "_Ghostbusters_ is one of my favorite movies," he said casually.

"I know. It's on your Facebook."

"Well, then, I guess I just have no reason to tell anyone anything anymore, huh?" Clyde shrugged. "I guess I'll see you later, man. Class?"

"Wait," Kevin said, "what about the unicorns?"

"What unicorns?"

"The robot ones," he said, inching closer with a stupid grin on his slim face. "The ones you think you're so good with."

"I am good with them," Clyde said. "Robot unicorns are, like... my bitch. I just need some more practice before I hit... turbo pro. Yup."

Kevin ran a hand through his hair, still oily and unwashed. The lens of his glasses were slicked over with a layer of dirt and fingerprints - it was a wonder how he could see. He stuck a hand into his pocket and brought out that orange Pac-Man ghost tin of his, popping a single piece of candy into his mouth. "Well," he said, chewing, "if you go on Facebook tonight, I'll give you pointers."

"The game controls consist of two keys, dude."

Kevin backed off the counter. "There is a lot more to it than you think." He lifted a hand up to say goodbye, and Clyde could have sworn he heard, "you're going to learn who to call," as he walked off humming the _Ghostbusters_ theme song.

* * *

Clyde got home before Craig did.

Clyde's trip home was a lot more eventful than Craig's was - though Craig's trip was only a couple of explosive pomegranate fantasies long, Clyde found a new best friend.

Not that Craig would find that all that disappointing, considering who it was.

Clyde was relieved to see Craig come into the apartment without screaming. Hands in his pockets, chill and relaxed, breathing in and out. He sat on his unfolded bed and felt that everything went better than expected. He closed his eyes. Clyde was making some noise from his bedroom, but that didn't matter.

Well, what _did_ matter was the smell that clouded their air. It smelled like a zoo. Craig opened his eyes and his sight was automatically fixated on a brown fur ball occupying the table beside their television.

"Clyde."

Nothing.

"CLYDE!"

Clyde humbly stepped out of his room, holding something made of newspaper. "You're home."

Craig stood up to observe this live, moving fur ball. "Tell me that's not a living rabbit."

"It's not a living rabbit," Clyde said. "But it is."

"Before I ask you why or how or what the fuck you're even thinking, why is it in a Bagel Bite box."

The rabbit sat still in the box, with the top cut off and the side flaps duct-taped for security (and it was _Craig's_ duct tape, at that). It was nibbling on bread, and its nose was wiggling and twitching. Clyde smiled softly at it. "Well, I found her..."

Craig crossed his arms and didn't leave time for Clyde to go on before demanding, "Explain."

Clyde began with a deep breath to tell his anecdote. "You see, what had happened was, I was walking home, right. And then, I heard this rustling, and I was like, 'Woah!'" He jumped for dramatic effect, "What was that? Sure enough, it was this little girlie digging around in some grass. She looked hurt, see? There's a scratch on her side." He pointed. "So I was like, 'oh, no!'" He plastered his hands on his face, Home Alone style, "what if she gets hurt out there all alone? So I reached for her and I thought she would hop away, but she let me hold her. She spazzed out though, which is why there's all these scratches on my hands," he held one up, "but you gotta hold her a certain way so she'll chill. I continued to walk her home, with her in my palms, and guess who I bumped into?"

Craig blinked.

"I bumped into your Cheeseburger. He was walking his dog. So I was like, 'yo, Tweek!' And he was like, 'AAAHHH' because he's scared of everything, and I was like 'AAAHHH' because he startled me, and then he asked me..." He took a breath to get into character. "'Oh, God! Clyde! Hi! _What!_ What is that! Is that a... BUNNY?' And I was like, 'why, yes, Tweek, this does happen to be a specimen of the rabbit species.' And then he was like, 'WHY?' And I said, 'I'm rescuing her. She's a lost soul.' And I guess he thought that was cool or something, 'cause he nodded, looking at her and I was like, 'aww' and he was like 'aww,' and then his dog got all spazzy and started barking so Tweek said he had to continue his walk."

"Oh."

"He also told me to tell you he said hello."

Craig put his hand over his mouth. He was sort of, not completely, but also not totally invisibly smiling. He tried to calm the corners of his mouth from going too ballistic. He did collect himself, because the last part probably wasn't as important as the fact that there was a wild animal in their house. He breathed out. "I see."

"And I thought you weren't speaking to me. Did you get my texts? Or did you see the note?"

Craig's eyes widened, and he whipped around to see the sloppy note lying on the arm of the sofa. He picked it up only to crumple it in his hand. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. First of all, the rabbit's gotta go. Secondly, I..." He thought of how to word it. _Straight-forwardness, no sugarcoating. _"I took care of this month's rent. Don't ask me how."

"All of it? Did you rob a bank?"

"Yeah, now the police are after us and we have to go to Denmark, get your coat on."

"Danish chicks are hot." Clyde fantasized.

Craig slapped his shoulder, sending him into a stupid little flinch. "We can't keep the rabbit."

"But _Craaaaig!_" He whined. "Fajita was lost and cold and hopeless when I found her. She'd be _dead_ by now if I didn't bring her home."

Craig was going to argue, but he paused. "You named her Fajita."

Clyde nodded ecstatically. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"It's a Mexican food."

"And feminine and elegant." Clyde wrapped his chubby fingers around Fajita. Her claws suddenly became more prominent—she squirmed like she was being brutally manhandled by Clyde. Well, she was, and she immediately escaped onto the floor, hopping at the speed she should have gone when Clyde tried to kidnap her. She left small, Cocoa Puff-like wastes behind and Craig cried in horror, the kind of cry when he walks in on Clyde naked.

Clyde chased Fajita around the living room, hunched over and in repetitive circles. Craig was somewhere between an unreadable poker face and on the verge of uncontrollable laughter—half because Clyde was actually doing this, and half because the Benny Hill theme was playing in his head. But it was mostly the latter.

Fajita stopped under the computer desk and Clyde tried to make a grab at her, but she hopped away again.

"Goddammit, Fajita!" He cried, getting up and hitting his head, _hard_, on the edge of the desk. "Mother of _God_—" he seethed in pain, holding his head in his hands and toppling over Craig's bed.

Fajita stopped at Craig's feet and he picked her up gently. He felt her claws scratch at him profusely, leaving marks that probably wouldn't go away for weeks; she calmed down in his hold, and he put her back in the Bagel Bite box.

Clyde was still groaning on the bed. "Nice."

Craig wiped his hands on his jeans. "Fuckin' balls, man. A rabbit." He looked at her. No, _it._ The rabbit was an _it. _

"I thought you liked small animals."

"Domesticated small animals," Craig corrected. "That bunny will never be what Stripe was."

"OH, build a bridge and get over it, will you?" Clyde snapped, getting up off the bed. He started to pick up the little cocoa poops off the carpet.

"I've _been_ over it." He put his face in his hands and exhaled. Oh, the things he had to deal with. Now he had to play the calm one. "Look, dude, the rabbit, it—"

"She."

"_She_ is going to cost us a lot of money. Do you think we really need that right now." He moved his hands in a manner that tried to prevent Clyde from being the one to freak out. "Like, her food and her cage and stuff. That's not gonna work out, man."

Clyde dropped the wastes in the trash and flopped back onto the bed. "Why does everything have to be so _difficult?_"

"You bring home a bunny and throw out a letter and _I'm _being difficult?"

"I didn't say _you_ were being difficult," said Clyde. "It's just. I. I dunno. I dunno, I dunno, I dunno! Like, _everything._" He felt like he had to come up with some lie or excuse, because he was flustered on an argument or anything remotely persuasive. "Everything is difficult."

"You know, getting rid of the bunny would surely bring a lot of weight off our backs," Craig reasoned. "And money."

"You just want to get rid of her because she's not as cute as your guinea pig." Clyde thought that was a good comeback.

"Despite the truth that lies in that statement, that's not the main reason. Keeping her _alive_ is going to be a hell of a lot of cash out of our accounts, and, and we don't even have water to feed or wash her, do you understand what I'm saying?" This wasn't quite helping Craig's personal goal to stop treating Clyde like a child.

Clyde understood. He understood very well. "Can we just... can we just keep her until I think she's well enough to go out on her own? I mean, look at her."

Fajita was staring at the wall.

"You're right," Craig said. "She's hopeless." His tone was sprinkled with fabulous tastes of sarcasm.

"So...?" Clyde jittered in his spot with excitement.

"We can keep her. I guess. For now. Okay." Craig knew he'd soon regret the words coming out of his mouth, but that was all to deal with later, right?

He had a lot of things to deal with later.

Clyde was jumping up and down, hugging Craig and thanking him a thousand times over. The scene had uncanny resemblance to a little girl thanking her daddy for a puppy. Maybe he wouldn't treat Clyde like such a child if he didn't act like this. It was like an acting job, it was - like he was just doing his performance, but he just got too in character when his co-star starts acting like _this._

"Yeah, yeah." Craig tried to pry him off. "You're welcome." He looked at the bunny in the corner, shaking her tail in all its fluffy glory.

_Fuck._

Later in the night, the two parted their ways on better terms - Clyde more so than Craig, though. Clyde was just ear-to-ear happy about keeping his baby Fajita. Craig was more or less, _apathetic, _so the entire population of South Park and beyond labeled him.

Clyde was locked in _his_ room doing God knows what on his laptop and Craig wasn't sure he wanted to know. He did hear Erasure's _Always_ playing, though, so it may or may not have had something to do with robots, unicorns and rainbows. On his own respective laptop, Craig opened a web browser and did a variety of things with his free night:

First, he played Robot Unicorn Attack Heavy Metal. The guilty pleasures were getting to him and every time he thought he heard Clyde coming out of his room, he tabbed away and let himself crash, only to swear under his breath. His scores were becoming significantly higher, and he thought that when he came out of the Unicorn Closet, he might like to compare scores with Clyde (he was sure he'd win).

The second thing he did was scour the Internet for an online stream of _Some Like It Hot_. If Token claimed that Craig wasn't spontaneous, he'd only be a little right. Craig spawned the random desire to watch this film in the middle of the day - well, maybe not the middle of the day, maybe the morning when 57's had actually played Marilyn Monroe's _I Want to Be Loved By You. _Of course, one of the better choices of background music they'd ever had. Craig's interest in black and white films from the 1950's overall influenced his application to the restaurant in the first place - but what did he expect, his life to turn black and white before his eyes? Monotone sound and static, and better clothing? It was nothing but a waiter's job and he didn't expect it to be hype and glory.

The appeal of black and white films to him was something he could probably talk about forever, but no one gave him the chance. Having an even bleaker outlook on life as a pre-teen, he thought the world should always be black and white. He thought that maybe that would have prevented bigger problems in society, like racism and what color wire not to cut so the experiment doesn't get fucked up. Well, maybe not the last one, but it always just sent him into silly little daydreams of colorless worlds and grainy film filters.

He didn't get through the entire film - Internet difficulties at fault - but his mind was set in the classier, black and white, neon signs of Hollywood in the 1950's and all that jazz film style. Something high in contrast to his usual imagination, which normally involved nuking cars out of his way during traffic (but ducking and covering was another significant aspect of the 1950's so it all tied together in the end).

Boring and apathetic were understatements for Craig Tucker - he was only selfish. He was selfish because he kept his ideas to himself, and never channeled them on the outside. If he could, he'd run around in a black sweater and beret, crying out orders through a megaphone whenever someone did something he simply didn't like.

He tabbed to YouTube. He'd had his account since he was sixteen. The username was _tuckerattack_, which was Clyde's great idea.

He went to look at his own list of videos. He only had a few, though he had planned to make more. He even opened each one with a title card: "_Tucker Attack Productions." _Most of them were videos of Stripe eating something or bathing or biting Craig's finger or shaking to some music or bothering the family at dinner or dressed up in a little leather jacket on a pink Barbie motorcycle that'd belonged to Craig's younger sister. All of these things were worth a couple of thousand views, but the last one he uploaded was during June of his senior year.

It was entitled, "_what the hell is a hoople?" _because the song Craig had used was _All the Young Dudes _by Mott the Hoople. Craig still didn't know what a hoople was.

The title's slight irrelevance to the video didn't make it any less nostalgic. It starts out with shots of the sky that Craig must have taken in his backyard for no particular reason. It fades from the clouds to Clyde's freshman face yelling at the camera, but it's muted - he can't read his lips, but it's probably something stupid. He runs down the sidewalk and trips over absolutely nothing, planting his face into the cement. The camera shakes because Craig and Token are behind it, breaking down the laughter.

That scene fades out and it's Craig's birthday, he's wearing a stupid cone hat in front of a cake. He's turning fifteen but his face looks like he's got a permanent scowl on it, and he's still a little short. He blows out the candles and everyone claps, and then Clyde and Token both smash Craig's face into the cake. This starts a cake war of epic proportions - Craig had even edited it so some scenes were in slow motion. He wondered if he had overdone it on the fading in and out, but Craig knew that fading in and out from black can save any production. Maybe not any, but most. Most, indeed.

The birthday scene fades into snow falling outside of Craig's window. This scene is in black and white. Craig turns around the camera so he's talking for a while, and Craig remembered that he must have said something like, "Tomorrow's probably going to be a snow day, so I'm going to record Stripe doing funny things in the sink. He doesn't like the sink."

That scene skips right to springtime, where Token is standing next to Clyde by Stark's Pond. Clyde is eating a dandelion because they dared him to for ten bucks. Clyde hiccups a yellow petal and the other two boys break down laughing again.

Then, they're in a crowded school cafeteria. Craig isn't in the yearbook club, but he pretends he is by zooming in on Tweek from a few tables away. Tweek notices the camera on him and immediately hides his face in his arms. Then Clyde starts to talk about nothing in particular and the scene cuts, to something else black and white. Craig couldn't quite make out what was happening, it seemed like they were running, and the camerawork was shaky. Then they fall, and Craig drops the camera in the grass. Token picks it up and tells Craig and Clyde to do the chicken dance. Craig says no, but Clyde follows orders immediately and he's flapping his little arm wings about. Whenever the camera shakes too much from laughing, the scene changes.

This time, it's hotter outside, so the boys are in T-shirts, playing with diet Coke and Mentos in the park. The diet Coke goes crazy and Clyde tries to catch some in his mouth. Some of the soda gets on the camera lens, so that's where Craig must have stopped recording. Somewhere along the rest of the video, there's a blur of familiar animals close-up with a wide-angle lens, more stalker zooms of Tweek in certain school locations, comparisons of the boys' test grades, art projects, and silly dances they sat out on the side of before girls came over to ask if they wanted to dance. By the time the clips are from senior year, people start pushing the camera away, and Craig pans the view to himself and he says something mean about them, flipping off the camera.

Then, there's a group shot of Clyde, Token and Craig, also in black and white, wearing tuxes to their senior prom - the three of them, all dateless by choice. There's a blur of Clyde trying to do the Robot at the prom, Token at the punch bowl, and Craig mouthing about how stupid some of the girls look in their dresses. The video ends with not high school graduation, but an elementary school graduation - a much lower quality than the rest of the video, but it brings Craig back.

At least things used to be good.

* * *

_television man is crazy, saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks  
oh, man, i need tv when i got t-rex  
oh, brother you guessed  
i'm a dude_

_all the young dudes  
carry the news  
boogaloo dudes  
carry the news _


	4. the excellent decisions of clyde donovan

**monster's note: **i think the best part about me finishing this chapter now is that my real life friends don't have to hear me TALK about this fucking story, without WRITING a word of it, 24 hours a day, 8 days a week. anyone who would EVER READ THIS AFTER **_NINE _**months DOESN'T HAVE TO because i just keep TELLING EVERYONE WHAT HAPPENS. it's been too long, i feel like i've lost you all. to homestuck! what if i changed the title of this fic to like, housestuck. homeflies. housestuckflies. jdksljd

i've been writing this author's note in my head for nine months and i've been planning this story elaborately... for only a few months now hahah plots get so intense when you use matt and trey's writing methods! therefore, but, therefore, but, it is very fun. i recommend it. needless to say, this is going to get ~*~CoMpLeX~*~ but you're not going to be able to see it through the painful piles of dialogue upon dialogue upon dialogue. so much talking. 8| i forgot how to write, like, legitimately the hardest part about writing this story is the parts where they're NOT talking. sob

um i had so many things to say but i am beyond disoriented. um i have some mistakes to fix from the last chapters, i mean they're ridden with mistakes and terrible wordings and awful lines but i JUST WANT TO SAY THAT... tits is white, not silver. why did i say silver. she's always been fucking white in my head.

also, siddhartha was a kshatriya, not a brahmin, but i guess that was tweek's mistake.

um, yeah i forget everything now but lol between the last chapter and this one, i have done MAD WORK for this story, MAD WORK. i'll just leave you to the story now and i'll edit this with important shit later actually jk none of this is actually important

oh yeah and the name of this chapter was supposed to be "the increasingly poor decisions of clyde donovan" as an homage to the show "the increasingly poor decisions of todd margaret". i've only seen the first episode, but i connected deeply with todd margaret. obviously that title did not fit. i went with excellent. because his decisions are exactly that, am i right. another alternative chapter title for this includes "fuck bitches get bunny."

i cannot proofread this omg so much talking no paragraphs PROBABLY MAD INCONSISTENCIES EVEN THOUGH I'VE SPENT NINE MONTHS TRYING TO PLUG HOLES

ok if you're still here after nine months you are probably as crazy as i am

* * *

**FUCKING SHOPPING LIST**

**1. AMERICA'S CHOICE WHOLE MILK****  
2. AMERICA'S CHOICE VERSION OF CAPTAIN CRUNCH (CRAIG ONLY)  
3. AMERICA'S CHOICE WHITE BREAD  
4. AMERICA'S CHOICE SALTED BUTTER  
5. TYSON CHICKEN FUCKING NUGGETS  
6. ToTino's PiZZA rolls! important  
7. easy mac  
8. black cherry soda  
9. NOT EASY MAC you cockfuck  
10. bacon NO!  
11. BAGEL BITES!  
12. BUNNY FOOD :)  
13. FOOT UP CLYDE'S ASS**

"Hey!" Clyde exclaimed. "Why does _everything _have to be America's Choice?" Clyde frowned down at the shopping list. He thought Craig was kidding when he said they were "going America's Choice." Crumpled, coffee-stained, yellow-and-green-paint-stained, half-written in black ink (Craig) and half-written in red crayon (Clyde), it was their sloppiest, least substantial grocery list to date. Without the freedom of a seemingly unlimited budget, the priorities were several elbows-to-the-gut and slaps-to-the-shoulder to agree on. And they still disagreed on it, but they were both starting to get bruised.

"Because America makes good choices." Craig was pushing the shopping cart, Clyde shuffling up behind him like a lost duckling. There was an obnoxious squeak coming from one of the wheels. At first, it didn't sound like it was actually coming from the shopping cart - it was that atrocious. Craig sometimes stole glances behind him to see if there were any dying animals nearby.

They were still in the parking lot. Intense obstacles made their journey to the entrance all the more enthusing; speed bumps, other neglected shopping carts, newspapers flapping in the wind. Craig took the catalogs from the baby seat of their cart and flicked them over his shoulder, giving Clyde a friendly hello in the face. He spat, whisking his hands at the air.

"Pumpkins!" Clyde cried upon making it to the sidewalk.

"God, Clyde, are you dumb. Those are clearly eggplants."

"Dude! This one is perfect." He heaved up a hefty, round pumpkin by its stem. "We need this. We _need _this."

That was the first thing Clyde "needed."

Other things Clyde "needed" included a pint of hummus, a basketball, a pumpkin carving kit, an ice cream cake, and a wheel of cheese. Craig was positively sure they needed absolutely none of those items. Then, he reasoned - he let Clyde keep the pumpkin, but what was he going to carve it with, spoons? He let him keep the carving kit, too.

Craig also reasoned that hummus was delicious. He let him keep that. When Clyde inquired about the basketball, Craig said, "You never play basketball."

Clyde said, "That's because we don't have a basketball."

Realizing that he had a point, Craig let him put that in the cart, too - and it was a goddamn _bargain, _Craig thought. It was only a dollar or so, so he thought it wouldn't hurt the budget too badly.

He had to say no to the ice cream cake and wheel of cheese. "What would we use those for," he said. "It is nobody's birthday. We do not live with a giant mouse." He thought of Fajita. He wasn't going to spend ten dollars to feed that overgrown rat nothing but cheese.

"We do too live with a giant mouse, and it is his birthday."

"Put it back, Clyde. Put it back."

It took more than enough time for them to discover they'd forgotten to put toilet paper on the list. Of course, pumpkins, basketballs and hummus weren't on the list either, but to eliminate essential toiletries? It was becoming clearer where their priorities lied.

Craig was still manning the shopping cart when they got to the toiletry aisle. He contemplated brands, tissue softness and product value.

And then Clyde started talking. "My friend told me his friend helped her sister shave her butthole."

The Charmin for two dollars and forty-nine cents seemed reasonable. "Uh-huh." But the rolls weren't thick enough.

"I was like, wow. What a bond they must have," Clyde went on.

The Scott was two dollars more, and the rolls were only slightly thicker. "Yeah." Craig put that back and picked up the Angel Soft. It seemed promising - 'soft' was in the name.

"And it got me thinking - I don't know, are we that close?"

_I don't like the picture of the girl on the wrapper. It's creepy. _Craig put back the Angel Soft, moving on to the Cottonelle. "Are you asking me to shave your butthole." _Holy shit, four plies? And a picture of a puppy. Goddamn._

"Hypothetically."

_Do we even need four-ply? It should have been the first thing on the list. Everything in this cart will make us poop. _"No. We're not sisters." _Cottonelle, you are expensive. Do they charge more for the puppy or something? If there is an America's Choice four-ply, we are getting that shit._

"You're right," said Clyde. "It's like... we're closer."

_Cockmongers. Only three-ply._ _It's cheap. It'll have to do. _"No."

Unbeknownst to Craig, Tweek was several yards away, debating between air fresheners. The only thing separating them were the shelves of aisle ten. Had these shelves been torn down, Craig had a pre-made series of fantasies to take place - filed under "Running into Tweek in Public" - most of which included a charming, charismatic conversation where social awkwardness was but a myth.

As Craig and Clyde transitioned one aisle, Tweek transitioned one aisle. At this rate, they were parallel lines, or repelling magnets - they wouldn't cross paths unless something extremely and ridiculously unlikely happened first.

"I'm thinking of trying to lose some weight," said Clyde.

"That's extremely and ridiculously unlikely."

"It is not. I've done it before, don't you remember."

Craig remembered. He remembered Clyde trying to order a salad at McDonald's.

_"You sure you don't want, like, a royale with cheese?" Craig had asked. "Le Big Mac?"_

_"No!" Clyde insisted. "But are you sure, like," he asked the clerk, "you don't have like, a salad version of the Big Mac?"_

Craig also remembered Clyde going home and standing on the scale with all his clothes on, including his sneakers. After weighing himself the first time, he took off his socks and shoes, weighed himself again, and insisted he lost two pounds.

The contents of their shopping cart were most definitely not going to help Clyde's apparent goal. Both of them knew this. They continued their shopping in silence. Silence between these two was like the lifespan of a mayfly. The quest for the twelfth item on their shopping list was not a peaceful one.

"Where the banana pants is the bunny food?" exclaimed Clyde, shoving aside thick sacks of dog and cat kibble. "Dogs! Cats! Birds! Hamsters! But no bunnies! Is this some sort of bunnyist establishment?"

Craig leaned on the bar of the shopping cart, waiting out the rave, like a disappointed wife. Clyde was so loud, they could hear him from aisles down. There was nothing Clyde could have said to make himself sound like a respectable human being.

A jarring voice from aisle fourteen shut him up. "RABBITS EAT LETTUCE!" It was Tweek. Craig didn't recognize the sound, though, since he'd never heard Tweek's voice at such a level.

Clyde was scanning the aisle for the culprit. No one looked guilty. "Who said that?" He gazed up at the fluorescent lights. "God?"

"Yeah," said Craig. "Yeah, it was God. Thanks, God."

"You're welcome," Tweek called back.

Craig thought it was Tweek for a good second or two, but doubted it since that would be extremely and ridiculously unlikely.

After picking out a nice head of lettuce for Fajita, they made way for the self check-out, because they'd rather interact with a computer than with a human. Clyde selected the Spanish option, making their purchase take much longer than necessary.

"Can't we shop for groceries like normal fucking people for once," grumbled Craig.

Not wanting to deal with the Spanish demands, Craig let Clyde have his moment with the machine. Clyde was one of those guys who took four years of Spanish and only learned how to say "hello" and "the cat is white." He remembered nothing about "_el dinero," _which he was sure sounded like dinner, nor did he remember anything about "_elegir la forma de pago."_

"I think she's asking for money," said Craig.

"_She _is bossy." Clyde carefully inserted crinkly bills, ignoring the Spanish nagging. "We need to go to my dad's store."

"Why."

"Because I'm going to grill hot dogs. Why do you _think, _Craig?"

Craig had pissed in Clyde's shoes. Well, there was that. "Hey, I did you a favor. Maybe now you can get some shoes that don't look like toilets."

"Your hat looks like a toilet."

"Your mom looks like a toilet."

This banter continued from the self check-out, to the car, and to the shoe store, which was located in the mall attached to the supermarket, much to their convenience.

And in that instance, many, many terrible things happened.

They were hit with a tidal wave of oncoming awkward situations, all idly waiting in the store, ready to strike like scattered mouse traps. The first trap was far too happy to see them.

Butters stood at 5'6", clutching a shoebox of brown Oxfords. He had a full head of blond hair, but the tuft atop his head was always the fluffier. He was overdressed in layers of knit sweaters, defining the gourd-like shape to his pudgy frame. He was also wearing women's flip-flops.

"Clyde!" Butters shouted. "How nice to see you!"

"Hey, Butterbro. Yeah, I like, work here sometimes."

Butters looked ecstatic, like he was in the middle of a high school reunion, and he was the star. "And you, Craig! What brings you here?"

Craig shrugged and jabbed a thumb at Clyde. "I'm with stupid."

"Remember my Facebook status, man?" Clyde asked Butters. "The one about Craig peeing in my shoes?"

"Oh, yeah!" Butters recalled. He then shot Craig an accusing glare. "Why did you do that?"

"The toilet wasn't working," Craig flatly said.

Butters nodded because Craig's excuse made everything seem okay. "Well, fellas, that's pretty silly. As for me, I was just gettin' some new shoes 'cause I hurled on my old ones." Clyde asked why. "Well, I was outside at maybe three in the morning -" Craig asked why. "I don't wanna talk about it," Butters said solemnly, nearly losing the cheerful rosiness in his cheeks. "Anyhow. I was outside with a drink. I was pretty out of it, so I didn't notice when a couple'a weird thingamajigs fell outta the sky, and into my drink. So, I drank it anyway, a-and it was pretty nasty, and it was over for my old shoes."

Clyde and Craig looked at each other. "_Sausages?_" Craig mouthed.

Clyde's mouth became fish-like. He frowned unsurely, shaking his head to say, "_I don't fucking know."_

At this very moment, the awkward meter measured in the green-yellow area. Quite moderately awkward. When Clyde heard his name being called again, this time by a higher, more enraged and antagonizing voice, the meter jolted to deep orange.

It was Bebe.

_Shit, cock, titties, holy mother of ballsacks and Christ on sale. _Clyde couldn't even comprehend why he was suddenly so intimidated, why there was a dropping pit in his stomach - it was like driving by a police car and hoping they don't notice you exist, even though there are no drugs or dead bodies in the vehicle.

Clyde had more drugs and dead bodies than he thought.

"_Clyde _Donovan," said Bebe.

"_Bebe _Stevens," mocked Clyde.

She took him by the arm, forcing him aside from Awkward Situation I to Awkward Situation II. "How are you?" she asked with faux interest.

"Oh, I'm fantastic, on account of my dad's shoestore slowly turning into everyone number-one hip hangout. It's karaoke night at the shoestore, oh, I'm fucking stoked. How about you, gurl, how's that beauty school and marine biology juggling act?" Clyde was disappointed that he was only truly witty when he was nervous.

"Peachy. I'm a goddamn superhero. I make mollusks look like supermodels, as usual."

Clyde laughed, coming off over appreciative of her sense of humor. Now under the impression that nothing was wrong, he tried to strike up a funny analogy of his work and school life to counter hers, but quickly failed as he found it not very funny at all.

"So, like," Bebe smiled now, all teeth, "why'd you stand me up?"

Clyde chortled, thinking this was a joke too. "Psh, I... had to save a burning building. Duh. Tch. Tchhpfft." Failure.

Bebe was not laughing. "On September thirtieth, I messaged you on Facebook inviting you to coffee at Tweak's." Bebe was fluent with her speech, meticulous and so clean-cut that Clyde thought she'd rehearsed. "Did it slip your mind again, Clyde?"

This news was bad, very bad. Clyde remembered September thirtieth. That was his first day on Facebook, and Craig was having his cheeseburger revelation in 57's -

_Oh._

"_You jerk," _Clyde mouthed to Craig. Craig didn't see; his attention was semi-dedicated to Butters, who was talking about grilled cheese. Behind them, was Tweek, extremely enticed with the sock rack. Craig didn't seem to notice. _Good, _thought Clyde, _fuck your dumb cheeseburger._

"You see, what had happened was," Clyde started a most unconvincing anecdote, "when I got your message, I was chilling with Craig and he was talking about cheeseburgers, and he got mad that I was looking at my phone while he was having an epiphany, he was a little too excited about his own metaphor, I gotta say, and then he grabbed my phone," - he mimed the action - "and threw it behind him like it was a piece of trash!" Pause. Waiting for the response where Bebe blames Craig for this whole thing. Nothing. "Needless to say, my phone did not like it, and neither did my Facebook. And so, your message went unread, and here we are now, all because of cheeseburgers."

Bebe just blinked. "You are such a flake."

"It wasn't my _fault, _Beebz! Craig threw it, and - and - and -"

"You were on Facebook all _night _and you didn't message me."

"Well!" spat Clyde, overexcited about the argument he was about to throw back, "it sounds like _you _were on Facebook all night to have known I was on Facebook all night. And _you _didn't talk to _me._"

"No. I was _studying. _Kevin told me you were online."

"Stoley?" Clyde squinted at her.

"Well, it wasn't Kevin fucking Bacon."

"_That jerk," _Clyde mouthed. _Why is no one on my side. _"Well, well - what do you _want _from me!"

Bebe yanked him closer. Clyde's body welled up with uncomfortable warmth. "_I want to pick up where we left off," _she whispered.

"_... On the bacon?" _Clyde whispered back, hungrier.

"_On our _relationship!" Her voice got lower now. Clyde got shifty-eyed, wondering why this was such a secret, and if he should be concerned that he preferred the idea of bacon over Bebe.

"_Bebe, we are _in _the shoe store." _Clyde brought himself down to her height to meet her eyes. "_You are telling me this _in. The shoe store. _Do you think I don't know what you're in for?" _He smiled at her, and she thought it was charming and gentle. He was actually just grinning because he unintentionally rhymed.

"_Don't you think I'm over that by now?" _she said, eyeing a lovely pair of wedged sandals. "_It's you I want."_

Clyde's stomach pit grew bigger. He glanced behind him. Maybe she was talking to someone else. He stared at the floor. "Are... are you serious." Perhaps this was another one of those jokes where she didn't laugh. Perhaps he was getting Punk'd, perhaps this was all a dream. "You just called me a flake."

"You're still cute."

"Oh, stop it, you." Flattery killed Clyde. "But seriously, if this is about the shoes, I swear I - I swear - I will do something very, very threatening. I don't know what it is yet but it'll - it'll scare you."

"Yes, I'm sure." Bebe did laugh this time. It wasn't supposed to be funny.

If rewound two minutes, it can be found that in Awkward Situation I, Craig stopped listening to Butters. Seventeen seconds later, Craig discovered Tweek's existence in the store. He was standing in line to purchase a pack of two pairs of socks, which is exactly what he didn't want. That left him with fifteen pairs of socks, plus one. That was thirty-one individual socks. He would need to get rid of three to return to his regular twenty-eight.

In a daring attempt to not cause Awkward Situation III, and instead combine two Awkward Situations, Craig decided to use Butters' enthusiasm and social fearlessness to grab Tweek's attention. This wasn't in his "Running into Tweek in Public" file, but it was worth a shot. "Butters, dude," Craig muttered, interrupting Butters' speech, "look, it's Tweek."

Butters swooped around. Called Tweek's name. Tweek predictably jumped and made an animalistic noise. Butters approached him and went on to interrogate him about how his life was going. Craig and Tweek met eyes over Butters' tuft. Exchanged miniature nods of acknowledgement. They silently agreed that they wanted Butters to leave. Neither of them knew how to do this, so impulsively, Craig took initiative during one of Butters' short pauses.

"Those are _nice socks,_" Craig said.

_Really? Really? _Tweek would've said. What he said instead was, "Yeah, I lost one. The whole thing's outta whack, man."

"Really, I lost one too," Craig said, even though he wasn't sure he had lost any socks. He probably did. The socks he was wearing were awfully mismatched.

Tweek's eyes lit up with relief. "That's great!"

"Why is that great."

Tweek dug into the left pocket of his cargos. He pulled out a freshly cleaned, ironed sock. "You can have this one. It's the one whose twin I lost."

Craig accepted the gift. He stretched it out, sneaked a whiff of it by grazing it past his face. Smelled of Tide. "Thanks, this is the best thing I've ever gotten."

"Aww, that's so nice," Butters cooed. They had forgotten he was there.

Craig wiped his clammy palms on his jeans. He was wearing the same pair as the day before - he passed out in them. He reached into his pocket for a handful of hope, and found a wannabe origami frog. He beamed, like he'd planned this. "Oh, I, uh, tried making on of those frogs," he said, looking down at the ivory tiled floor. He opened his hand to reveal a ball of crumpled white paper. "But he... died."

Tweek was moving up in line to pay for his socks; Craig followed, with his hand still sprawled. Tweek just chuckled at it.

"Why are you laughing. He's dead."

"I don't think he was ever alive to begin with," Tweek said.

"Wow, I never knew you could be so insensitive. This frog was crippled."

"Poor froggie," Butters said. No one heard him.

"Well, it's a cute attempt," Tweek said before reaching the counter for his purchase. Craig let him have his space for those few seconds. Butters finally moved to the back of the line. During the silence, Craig got to stare intently at the features of Tweek's profile. His neck and jaw were speckled with birthmarks, some lighter than others, some gathered in clusters under his hair, others were so subtle you'd have to be breathing his air to see them.

Craig was breathing his air.

"Excuse me," Tweek murmured.

Craig opened his mouth to begin an apology, but struggled with an excuse instead. "I - something. In - on, your face. There's something on your face."

"Oh my god, what is it? Is it a bug? Get it off!"

"No, no, no, shut up, no." Craig brushed off the imaginary dirt with the pad of his thumb. "All gone."

"Thanks! You want these socks?" They both stepped away from the counter. Craig had no idea what he was being offered.

"What. More socks? No. You need socks. You just bought those. You don't need to give me more socks for wiping shit off your face."

"No, no, sheesh, that came out so weird. I just, I was just wondering if you wanted the second pair of socks because if I don't lose one pair, I'll have fifteen pairs and that is too many."

"Why is that too many. That is a perfect amount of socks."

"Says you! I have to have fourteen. If I have more or less, it's weird."

"Why."

"That's just the way it is!"

"That's just the way it is, is that what you're telling me. You're giving me socks you paid for because that's the way it is."

"Yes. You gave me coffee you paid for, didn't you?"

"That's different, it wasn't my coffee or my money."

"Look, I _really,_" Tweek ripped apart the packaging, "need to get rid of these socks. Will you just take them, please?"

"Fine. Fine. Give me the socks." Craig took them, all rolled up and pure white, stinking of plastic. "Can I get origami lessons too."

"Is that a serious question?"

"In exchange for me taking the socks off your hands, yes." Craig unrolled the socks and slipped them over each of his hands.

"That's not an exchange. That's me giving you more things."

"I'm doing you a favor taking these socks," he grumbled, punctuating with jazz hands.

"No. I'm doing _you _a favor. You look like a man who needs socks."

"What makes you say that."

Tweek presented Craig's feet, which were covered with two different socks, fighting for dominance, underneath ugly coffee-brown sandals. "Mandals, dude? You don't even need socks for mandals."

Craig damn near said, "But I have hairy toes," but his filter caught it before it dropped. It was too soon for those kinds of details. Instead, he just said, "So."

"The socks are a favor. Trust me."

"So you wouldn't give me origami lessons _anyway. _Even if you didn't do me this favor."

"No - I - gah, I'm not a teacher! I don't want to be responsible for someone's paper folding education!"

"I see how it is."

"No, you don't see how it is! I don't even see how it is. I didn't mean to sound rude, it was a weird question!"

"You just handed me an odd number of socks and _I'm _asking weird questions."

"Hey, that odd number of socks is your problem now, I'm fine!"

"So now it's my problem, not a favor."

"I don't know, _is _it a problem?"

"No. It's cool. I don't even care. I _love _these socks. Thank you for the socks."

"You're welcome."

They hit a dead end. Just stared at each other.

Meanwhile, Craig's ears were experiencing the misfortune of hearing something repulsive, goopy, sloppy, something that sounded like an animal eating something creamy but turned out to be Clyde and Bebe playing hockey with their mouths.

Craig shut his eyes and pretended it wasn't real. "Are you kidding me right now. He comes for shoes," he yelled at Tweek, "HE COMES FOR SHOES. AND GETS THIS." Craig felt it was his fault - had he not peed in Clyde's shoes, they wouldn't be here today, at this very moment, in a clusterfuck of Awkward Situations. _Maybe I should have pissed in his backpack or something instead._

"Bebe came for shoes too," said Tweek. "Or maybe she didn't. Girls are complicated."

"Wow," said Craig, "I hate everything. His dad's not gonna like this security tape."

* * *

Much later that afternoon, Bebe stumbled out of Clyde's bedroom, aiming for the kitchen for a glass of water. Adorned in nothing but a spaghetti-strap tank top and red lace panties, she winced when she saw Craig on his bed, extremely invested in the screen of his laptop. "Oh, Jesus, Craig," she said, "I forgot you lived here."

Craig didn't look up. He knew who it was. "Well, the place certainly wouldn't be so clean if Clyde lived here alone."

Bebe giggled a girlish giggle. "That's true. God, I'm sorry for just showing up unannounced like this. I should have gotten dressed, I'm so embarrassed."

"Nothing I haven't seen before." He truly hadn't seen it before, because he hadn't looked up yet.

"Oh, but my hair-"

Craig looked up this time. Bebe's hair looked like it always did. Her bangs were a little straighter and more tame than the rest of her frizz. She had a curvy contour, defined by what must have been natural D-sized breasts, but Craig could never tell the sizes. He thought A was the biggest, inferring that they must have been like grades. "It's fine. Really."

"... Question."

"Bring it."

Bebe hesitated, but just spat it out. "Clyde ever talk about me?"

"Oh, yeah. Plenty. Lots of times. Always about your tits." That wasn't a lie. It was always about the tits, or some shirt that made her tits look great, or how perky her nipples were, or what fruit reminded him of her tits, or the way her hair conveniently fell over them like a pair of curtains, and flipped out of the way like the beginning of a Broadway show.

"Goddammit, things just don't change, do they? I'm so sick of being nothing but a pair of knockers. But I suppose Clyde would be the last person to mature from that stage."

"Many haven't, honestly. But yeah. Yours. They're real items. Sorry. But you know, you're a lot more than that. It's not hard to see." Craig stopped himself. He sounded like he was in love with her. And that was the last thing he wanted to sound like. He followed up with this articulate compliment: "You're really nice and stuff."

"Nice and stuff, yeah, that's real reassuring. But I knew a guy like you would understand. You're still gay, right?"

"Well, you don't exactly go _back _from being gay."

"Cool. Okay, I'm sorry, but, ugh, _God, _is it okay if I talk to you about something?"

"I think it's a little too late to be asking me that, Bebe."

"Valid point. I'm sorry. But Clyde is just so... _bad_, you know?" No. Craig didn't know. "In bed." Craig really, really didn't know. "It's like having sex with a frightened worm."

"And you know what that's like."

"After Clyde, yeah, it's not even negotiable. He thinks it's hot, but he doesn't know how to _move. _I just hate having to, like, whisper directions and push his head in places and ask him to take off his socks and... you know what I mean?"

Craig didn't. "Yeah. Completely. Totally." He worried he was buying himself a one-way ticket to being Bebe's sassy gay friend. He didn't want to be anyone's sassy gay anything.

"What's it like, though?" Bebe asked. "When you sleep with guys?"

Craig was a little off-put by the query, but kept his cool. "You're assuming I sleep with guys."

"You're gay, aren't you?"

"Being gay doesn't mean I sleep with guys like I go through boxes of Captain Crunch. It just means I'm gay."

"So you're not sleeping with anyone."

"Does it really look like I would be."

"You're a good-looking guy!"

This got a smile out of Craig. He felt pathetic for doing so. "Thanks, but, I don't really... quote unquote _like _anyone. You know me, Bebe. It's a wonder I put up with Clyde."

"Clyde is the Ernie to your Bert, though."

"We get that a lot."

"I'm sure. You have Bert's eyebrow."

Craig put his finger between his eyebrows. He swore he felt some sort of dividing point. He frowned lightly as Bebe invited herself to sit on his bed.

"How do you know you're gay if you've never liked anyone? Unless you did like someone. Did you like someone? _Do _you like someone?"

"No."

"You answered too quickly. You like someone."

"I don't have to like a specific person to know I'm not attracted to ladies."

"Come on, _someone _must tickle Craig Tucker's fancy."

"My fancy isn't ticklish."

"I call bullshit. Do you have some sort of special snowflake syndrome where no one is good enough for you so you just turn away from anyone who shows interest?"

"That'd be hilariously accurate if anyone were interested in me."

"So now it's an insecurity thing? Do you know how many of my girlfriends _dream_ of you being heterosexual?"

"I don't know, how many."

"Uh, a lot! You should really start letting people in, Craig. Or maybe a trip to Hawaii would really improve your sex life."

"Hilarious."

"All I'm saying is that you can't just go around deciding no one is worthy of you. Someone _has _to be decent enough to suit your tastes. I'd say it's a pretty immature attitude."

Craig took his fingers off the keyboard. He started patting his pants, feeling around in the blankets, lifting the pillows.

"What are you looking for?" Bebe asked.

"A fuck to give." He even bent over to look under the bed. "Looks like I can't find one. Sorry."

"Wow, rude," spat Bebe. She sighed, lifting herself from the bed to gather her clothes from Clyde's room. She dressed sloppily, flipping her purse over her shoulder as she headed out. "I hope you find your fuck, Craig," she said, stepping out the door. "You're really going to need it."

An even amount of minutes later, Clyde emerged from the bedroom, in nothing but plaid boxers and one white sock. "Bebe left?"

"Yeah. Said she had to do some beauty school shit." She didn't.

"Aw, man. Left me hanging. I was hoping for a morning blow."

"It's six in the evening," Craig said.

Clyde stretched. "She really can do wonders with her mouth, you know." Craig didn't know. "Goddamn. But yeah. I was an animal." He wasn't.

"Yeah, she said you were great." She didn't.

"She talk about me?"

"Oh, yeah. The whole time. All about your giant cock." It wasn't giant at all.

"Man! I'm so sick of being nothing but a nice wang. That and a pair of shoes."

"I don't think you should have much to worry about there."

"I don't think you even understand, bro, when was the last time you got laid?"

"Not today." That wasn't a lie. Though, the real answer was, "not ever." And not even Clyde was aware of the fact. He just thought Craig was secretive with his sex life. But it was difficult for Craig to be secretive with something that didn't exist.

"You been out fuckin' guys behind my back?"

_Behind your back. _Craig thought, _why would I fuck guys in front of you. _"Yes, of course," he said. "All the time."

"No, you don't!"

"Nothing gets by you, huh."

"See? You are underfucked! That's why you're so angry all the time!"

"Yeah, that's gotta be it." It wasn't.

"Come on, man! We're going out tonight anyway, we can find you a nice guy's cherry to pop!"

"Please don't say that." Craig only heard the part about popping someone's cherry. That was the part he disapproved of. Then, everything Clyde said registered, and he decided he didn't approve of anything he just said. "Wait, we're going out?"

"Yep! Shit, we should have left by now. To the city!"

"The fuck, for what?"

"Remember when I said I would try stand-up for money?"

Craig rubbed his temples. "Unfortunately."

"Well, a few weeks ago..."

"Oh, God."

"... this place in Denver was looking for comics..."

"Oh, _God."_

"... and said they'd pay me fifty bucks of I could come up with thirty minutes of material."

"I don't like anything you just said."

"You don't like the money part?"

"Fifty bucks isn't going to do us much."

"You fuckass pessimist! Fifty bucks is fifty bucks and that's _something._"

"You've got no experience. What the hell are you even going to talk about, you're going to fail and you're not going to get paid and this is completely useless. There is no comedy scene in Colorado. This is not New York."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just tear me apart inside. I hear the first time isn't that bad. You know, like high school sex." Again, Craig still didn't know. "There's probably going to be agents there. Maybe I'll get picked up and they'll give me a _Comedy Central Presents _special and a sketch show that lasts for less than a season."

"That's extremely and ridiculously likely."

"You think so?"

"No."

"The show lasting for like three episodes is likely."

"The show lasting for no episodes is likelier."

"Does hurting me bring you pleasure, Craig."

"Yes."

"Maybe you should punch pillows to let out your pent-up anger."

"Who said I was angry."

"You seem angry."

"No, I love life."

"Uh-huh, you sure do. You just fuckin' love smelling flowers and shit."

"You know it."

"Running through fields in slow motion."

"Every day."

"Riding horses naked on the beach."

"That's your fantasy."

"Is not."

"You said it."

"You're the one who loves life so much."

"Not enough to fulfill your fantasies."

"I'm not gay, you are."

"I beg to differ."

"I licked pussy today, what did you do."

"I kicked you in the shin."

"No, you didn't."

Craig kicked him in the shin. "I'm pretty sure I did."

Clyde dropped several feet. "Fuck you, man!" He hopped on one leg to the computer desk. Wobbling over the spinning chair, he sat sideways, rubbing his calf. "Look," he said, bringing up Facebook. "Look how many people are attending."

_**clyde donovan's first comedy show  
**__Token Williams, Stan Marsh, Jimmy Valmer and Tweek Tweak are attending._

Craig thought that was a weird combination of people. "Tweek," Craig said aloud, and it felt odd this time, like he was calling a cheeseburger by a scientific name. "I didn't think Tweek would have a Facebook. He seems like one of those guys who doesn't believe in social networking."

"I don't know if he does. Maybe he has like, a secretary to do it for him. Like the president."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"Are you going to make a move, McLovin?"

Craig shrugged. "What move do I have to make. He's just a cheeseburger, okay. Not someone I want to commit to. I don't like commitment -"

Clyde spun around in the chair. "I'm not telling you to propose to him, man."

"- he's for _looking, _not for _touching, _you know?"

"You don't just look at a cheeseburger like _that,_" Clyde groped the air, "without wanting to have a taste."

"I do. I do it all day at work. I see many cheeseburgers daily."

"Real cheeseburgers, or people you salivate over?"

Craig raised his arms and furrowed his eyebrows, physically saying, "Clyde, what the fuck do you think," but verbally saying, "real cheeseburgers."

"You really ought to work on clarifying your metaphors."

"Sometimes, Clyde, you just have to use context clues."

"What do I know about context clues. I haven't read since high school."

"You ought to work on that."

"You ought to work on scoring that cheeseburger."

"I'd rather not."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't even like, _know_ him anymore, okay, the extent of our friendship is socks and origami frogs."

Clyde stood up. Faltered a little from the pain in his shin. "That's pretty fucking kawaii."

* * *

Clyde took the wheel on the way to Denver. Craig sat shotgun with his right hand propped up on his face, like he was Clyde's teenage daughter.

Not very far into their trip, Clyde started one of his stories. "You know, during my nap, after me and Bebe did the nasty, I had a dream. I was like, in an aquarium, and what I would do is I would touch the tanks, and with just that touch, the glass pane would pop off and shatter, and all the water would come flowing out and all the fish would die. And then I would just walk away, like I didn't do it."

"That seems like something you would do," Craig said, without raising the hand from his cheek. Perpetually a teenage girl. "Fuck shit up and leave it there."

"I know, but like, what does it mean?"

"That is what it means. You fuck shit up and leave it there without fixing it."

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do about a bunch of dying fish?" He slammed the steering wheel. "All flopping around in a pile of poopy tank water and glass shards? That just seems like something I should leave to the professionals."

"That's what you do. You wait for things to fix themselves. But you can't. You have to save the fish."

"How the hell am I supposed to save all these fish? There's hundreds of them."

"Pick them up by the armful." Craig finally straightened his spine and made the charade of an armful of fish. "And dump them into some other tank."

"Well, it's not exactly that easy. I thought that if I came to you with my dream, since you're so metaphorical and shit, you'd turn it into something legit, but now you're just winging it."

"Fuckin' A, I'm not a psychiatrist. But you know what Freud would say: You need to bang more. The fish... symbolize your... lonely sperm, I guess." Fingers wiggled.

"I banged _right before _I had the dream."

"Well, you know how horny those Austrians were. You just need to fuck more. That, or the fish symbolize all the problems you need to solve, I don't know."

"I don't like either of those interpretations."

"Fine then." Craig put his elbow on the windowsill again. "Leave it alone. S'just a dream."

* * *

Craig was under an adorably false impression that he was done with awkward social situations. At least for this very date. Today was Thursday. Fucking Thursday, and he'd already went over his personal word limit. He didn't want to breathe another word for the rest of the night.

They got to this bar - someplace sleazy, in Craig's opinion. Flickering sign, a cute neon pink poster that said "_COMEDY NIGHT!"_ written in Crayola markers. People loitered outside, the kinds of people Craig hated seeing in any public area. These people happened to be the unusual combination of kids that responded to the event on Facebook. Craig didn't think those things were legitimate, so when he saw these people, it was like seeing real Muppets.

Clyde went around to the back of the bar, whatever "backstage entrance" he thought he had privileges to. It was a parking lot riddled with trash cans and a homeless guy or two. There was a clunky black door with no doorknob that had "STAGE" spray-painted in white on it.

Back around front, Token, Tweek, Jimmy and Stan were conversing about something Craig didn't bother listening in on before interrupting them. "Hey. Uh. Were you guys waiting for us or something."

Token gave a two-finger wave. Craig was offended. They'd downgraded from a bro handshake.

Tweek was bouncing, shivering from the cold. He was wearing a green cardigan over a thin T-shirt. He nodded at Craig. It was more personal than the nods they exchanged that afternoon. Craig tried to smile. He kept his teeth concealed, but Tweek got the message.

"Where's Clyde?" Token asked.

Craig pointed to the mysterious, brick-walled walkway to the right of the bar. "Backstage passes, I guess."

"Not getting any warmer here!" Tweek said.

Craig didn't know where to go, but he led them inside because they seemed to follow him. Craig had gone from Clyde's teenage daughter to the disgruntled father of these four kids in a matter of minutes.

The tables were round, the center candles were fake. Token, Tweek and Craig took one table, Stan and Jimmy at another. There was a two drink minimum. This did not sit well with Tweek. He tried to order a Sprite. Then he said, "Er, come back to me."

Craig ordered a White Russian. Tweek cut in with "MAKE THAT TWO!"

"You do drink?" Craig asked, after all the orders were taken.

"I don't!" Tweek cried. "I just got nervous. What's a White Russian?"

"Coffee liqueur, vodka, cream."

"Wow, I accidentally order an alcoholic beverage and it's got coffee in it! How predictable can I be!"

"Coffee liqueur is not coffee."

Meanwhile, in the sketchy "backstage," Clyde was chatting it up with the comedian he was opening for. "So. Is this your first time?"

"No."

"Oh." Clyde swayed. Zipped up his hoodie. "Cool."

The black door swung open and bonked Clyde, hard, in the forehead. It very quickly dawned on Clyde that he had not chosen a wise place to stand. The ringing in his ears was layered with the sound of his cue. "Donovan, go."

Clyde tried to forget the sprouting alien on his forehead and jogged onto stage, shadowboxing.

Token clapped slowly. _He's shadowboxing, _he thought. _That's the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do._

Clyde gave the microphone stand a pelvic thrust, then just opened his mouth. "Hey, what's up, I'm Dyde Clonovan. I'm from South Park. That's it. That's the joke. It's really hard to joke about South Park because the town itself is just a joke. It's like cheating. I'm sure you can see the monsters destroying our town from your yuppie penthouses. But yeah, uh, nothing much has happened there in awhile. It's like we've got a little chart with interchangeable numbers - '_657 days since last time the town was destroyed by something fucking weird.' _Okay, that's it for South Park. Fuck South Park. I don't know about you, but I've been lazy my whole life. I am so lazy that as a kid, I didn't even have the decency to be a real kid. My friends would be like, _let's climb up this fuckin' tree! _I'm like, really, man, that's fucking interesting, but I've got a PB and J sandwich to eat."

He got a few laughs. There was chatter in towards the back, and Clyde was fine with that so long as those people weren't openly judging him.

However, his friends were silently judging him already. Craig thought, _he thinks he's Jerry Seinfeld. _Token thinks he's mediocre, so far, but isn't so good at transitioning subjects. Tweek had always thought Clyde was funny, throughout middle school and high school, for no reason he could pinpoint.

"... You go be a monkey. I'm good here. And I mean, I didn't even want to do easy things. My friends were like, _let's put these fuckin' Peeps in the microwave! Let's kill these goddamn birds. That sounds like fun! _I'm like, no, that is mad work. I am not cleaning up Peep guts. You have fun, I'm not done with this PB and J."

Token rubbed his eyes. _He didn't clarify that they were marshmallows. He sounds like we're killing real birds._

"That'd be a funky smell, huh. Peep guts. What if that was like, a fragrance. I mean, who bottles these obscure smells? Midnight pomegranate? What makes a pomegranate smell different at midnight, is it like, a werewolf or something. _Nasty fruit by day... dark, mysterious and sexy lady smell by night."_

Stronger laughs. Clyde felt like he was on fire.

"What about all those smells having to do with the ocean? I don't even know, uh, sexy 2:35 in the morning ocean night foxy breeze. The ocean at 2:35 in the morning smells like whale piss and seagull carcass. Not that any of us would know. This is Colorado. But I've been on several vacations to fucking _Narnia_, where there are oceans and unicorns and a half-naked James McAvoy there to greet me and invite me into his little fawn cove for a cup of Earl Grey."

_Okay, _Token thought, _how many people actually know James McAvoy played the fawn in Narnia._

"I've got a lot of buddies here tonight. What's up, guys." Gave them a little wave. "My best friend is here tonight, too. Craig. Do we have a spotlight guy? Can we find him? Or is there a flashlight guy? The spotlight guy can't find you, Craig. You have to wave. He's the one hiding his face, spotlight guy. There he is. I'm only a little sorry I didn't warn you about the shout-out, man. Otherwise I know you would have split and spent the night in the bathroom. There's a cheeseburger there giving free blow jobs. See, that's the thing with Craig, you guys. He compares people to cheeseburgers. People he wants to fuck. He calls them cheeseburgers, I'm telling you - I don't know whether or not to find that degrading. Or just a plain new sexuality altogether. I mean, I don't blame him. I'm pretty sexually attracted to cheeseburgers. I don't know what it is though, because Craig's gay. And the thing about havin' a gay roommate is that you never know when you're gonna wake up with his mouth around your cock."

Craig choked on an ice cube. _No. No. I hate him. I hate him. I hate Clyde. I hate him so much._

"Craig pissed in my shoes the other day. Ha-ha, yeah, it's funny now. It's funny now 'cause my dad owns a shoestore and I went to get new shoes from my own dad's store after the incident. And I ran into my ex. So not only did I get _shoes, _I got _laid. _Thanks for that, buddy." Clyde paused, smirking in Craig's general direction. Craig was coughing, with both Token's and Tweek's attention devoted to the fit. Clyde looked away, then to the side, where the manager was standing. "How long have I been here?" Clyde asked, chuckling, like it was the beginning of a joke. The manager held up five fingers. "Five? F-Five minutes?" He lowered the microphone. "I thought I'd be done by now." He hummed, his voice only half amplified. "Are you sure that wasn't a half hour?"

* * *

"So they gave you the fifty bucks anyway?" Token asked, once Clyde was occupying the fourth seat at their table.

"Yeah. And they asked for an eight by ten photo of me. I could use the one I have from senior year."

"Yeah, that's professional," Token scoffed.

Craig and Tweek proceeded to carry on a completely different conversation, though not much more interesting. The awkwardness of Tweek's opening line nearly stopped Craig's heart.

"Soooo... these White Russians, huh." Tweek sipped his. It was his second one. He liked the creaminess, but not so much the vodka. "Why do you drink these anyway?"

"I'm a Coen Brothers fan," Craig replied.

"What?"

"Never mind." He took a gulp, smacked his lips. He tried to think of something to get Tweek to talk more, and perhaps bring down the excruciating level of the Awkward Meter a couple of notches. "So. How's your dog." Didn't even hit the target.

"Fine! She's fine." _Why does he care? _"There's something wrong with her leash. You know, it's the kind that extends? It doesn't lock! What am I supposed to do about that?"

"Get a new leash."

"But it's new! What do I tell the store? Should I return it? Get a refund or what, store credit?"

Craig picked at ice cubes with his fingers. "Get a new leash."

"But what if I want my money back or something, man? That stuff's not supposed to gyp me."

Craig was self-aware that he didn't know how to manage money. He just wanted to sound right, give valuable advice. "I'd just buy a new leash." He sipped from the mostly empty glass, taking a watery swig, and rattling it to get himself an ice cube to chew on. After steeper dipping, the chunks hit him in the eyes. "Fuckers," he whispered at them, wiping moisture off his cheeks. _More questions. More questions. Don't be afraid to be obnoxious._ "How did you get here. You, uh... don't drive, do you?" _Beyond obnoxious._

"Stan drove me."

"Stan drove you. Dude, he's not going to be able to drive you back. He's going to be wasted off his nuts."

"How will _he _get home?"

"Stan? I don't care." (_"I care how the fuck you get home right now.")_

"Well, um, is public trans so bad?" (_"It is. It is so bad. Don't fucking make me take public trans.")_

"To South Park?" Craig stretched one arm out, pointing where he thought South Park was from his position. "You might as well walk." _("Let me drive you home.")_

"Well, uh, Stan looks fine right now..." _("Yeah. Stan is already shitfaced.")_

"You don't want to be in a car with him." _("Let me drive you the fuck home.")_

"I don't want to be a burden to anyone!" _("Please fucking drive me, I am actually going to die.")_

"You wouldn't be a burden." _("You can ride shotgun.")_

"You wouldn't... um... would you dri -" _("Why aren't you directly offering, you passive inconsiderate piece of shit?")_

"Yes. I can drive you." _("Come home with me and teach me the ways of your frogs.")_

"Oh, God, seriously? You can really drive me?" _("That didn't take ages.")_

"Yeah." _("Did I fucking stutter.")_

"Well, thanks." _("Well, thanks.")_

"You're welcome." _("You're welcome.")_

* * *

The car was cold. The windows were frosted over with a splotchy fog. Streaks of smiley faces and hand prints stood out, urging Tweek to trace over them with his finger. He started with the smiley face. His circle was squigglier. The eyes and mouth came out shaky, too. Less happy than before.

Tweek wrapped himself in his arms, regretting the stupid green cardigan. He licked his chapped lips, breathing a cloud of chilled air. He hesitated when he reached for the heat control, worried that Craig might have been one of those guys who was picky about temperature. Tweek curled his fingers, bones crackling in the silence. "Is it all right if I turn up the heat?" he asked, more than half expecting to get a negative answer.

"Yeah, sure," Craig said. "Do whatever."

Tweek internally scolded himself for thinking Craig would actually get mad at him for that. It was dumb. So dumb. He turned the knob to the deepest shade of red. The vents blew even colder air.

Craig drummed on the steering wheel. The road ahead of them was lightless, save for the headlights, which only enhanced the sight distance by a couple of yards. Unsettled by the airy buzz of the heat, he poked the radio dial. "What station?"

"I - I - uh, I don't listen to the radio."

"Do you like music in general?"

"Nope! Music sucks," Tweek announced, crookedly smiling. Craig arched a brow. "I'm kidding," said Tweek. "I'm just kidding. Of course I like music."

"So what do you like?"

"I don't know."

"I love that band."

"That's not a band," Tweek said, scrunching his nose.

"I was kidding too."

"Oh!" Tweek gave his lopsided grin again. "Then it's funny."

"Yes, yes, sarcasm is funny. Now, seriously, what do you listen to."

"Uhhh! Nice things. Like... like... wow, I'm drawing a blank here, I'm sorry -"

"It's okay."

"I guess like, older stuff? From the nineties and before."

Craig approvingly nodded. "That's cool. That's cool. Eighties station, then?"

"Sure!" Tweek vigorously nodded back.

Craig flipped through the channels and stopped when he heard _Carry on Wayward Son. _"Check it out. Kansas. You gotta like Kansas."

"Isn't this like, their only song?" Tweek looked around the car for the speakers, like he wanted to talk to Kansas. Get close to Kansas. "I've never heard anything else from Kansas. Ever."

"May as well be. It's the only song anyone gives a shit about. In all those sappy dramas and shit. Driving away in the sunset, I think it's the one with those two guys, what's it called. Nupersatural or something."

A raspy, bubbly voice mumbled lyrics from the back. It belched. Spat up like a baby. Craig whirled around to check on him, but quickly set his eyes back on the road. "Dude, check on him for me."

"Uh, he's fine?" _What kind of status is he looking for? _"He looks -"

Guttural noises. Wet croaks. A thin, amber fluid met the carpeting, phlegm, chunks, bubbles and all.

"- He's puking!"

"I'm pretty sure I can hear him puking."

"What do we do! Is he gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, he's gonna be okay. He'll be hungover bad, though."

"Poor Clyde! Why did he drink so much?"

"He's Clyde." Craig had no other explanation. He was relieved by the heavenly light at the end of the tunnel - the glowing comfort of a gas station. He parked, muttering, "I got this." He opened one of the backseat doors. The one Clyde's butt was facing. Craig looted for his wallet, and found the crisp, new fifty.

In the mini mart, he gathered handfuls and handfuls of car air fresheners. Lemon, pine, strawberry, sexy ocean midnight breeze. He didn't even look. The purchase wiped away half of Clyde's newly earned fifty.

He knew he'd be thanked.

"Help me unwrap these," Craig said to Tweek, dropping the packets onto the driver's seat.

"I thought you were getting things to clean it with!"

"I am not cleaning that shit," Craig said as he ripped open a pine one. The smell puffed into his face. He wheezed, scratched his nose. "Not right now."

Together, Craig and Tweek decorated Clyde with colorful pieces, tied in his belt loops and around his ears and nested in his hair and stuffed in his pockets. They left a few for the rear view mirror.

It made the difference.

"He'll be fine," Craig assured. "He'll be fine."


	5. the rise of the vegan artist curtains

**a/n: **four months! pretty good for me, innit? that's such a short period of time, i don't even have a lot to say. except i do, because i always have a buttload of things to say before i give you a chapter.

firstly, i realized i totally forgot to tell you guys last chapter, that last summer i was in disney world. that's not the gr8 part. the gr8 part is that i was at mgm studios, which has a new name now, something dumb like hollywood studios or something i dunno BUT WHEN I WAS LIKE 9 IT WAS STILL MGM STUDIOS AND THAT IS WHAT I WILL CONTINUE TO CALL IT - it's the one with that batshit ride, you know, tower of terror? i thought i was a grown ass woman and i could take that on now, because it scared me shitless when i was 9, but it turns out that thing still makes me shit my pants. i don't trust those fucking seatbelts man ok ANYWAY i was in hollywoodmgmfuckyouinthebutt studios and i was chillin in a 50'S THEMED RESTAURANT and my waiter was named CRAIG and i basically lost all my shit. i don't know why i'm telling you this, though, because the only people who probably still read this story are the ones i sent that mass text out to as soon as it happened 8| it was then i knew i had to pick this story up again. except it didn't work because i didn't update until december, but REGARDLESS IT WAS PRETTY SWEET

okay what else what else. um, this chapter's shorter than all the rest of them? HAHA i hate having to keep myself within a 8k-13k range, i just can't fill shit up anymore. but, i said fuck the police, i'll stop when i want, so this chapter is really like 6k WHICH I THINK IS A FINE, LOVELY LITTLE CONCISE LENGTH for important things to happen. this chapter is important as fuck but i don't want to blow it up for you, just read it and love it plz

oh oh here's something else: i made clyde's real facebook! i know everyone does that roleplay shit but i made his profile practically identical to the beginning of the story. i would have done that like two years ago but idk IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO DO RIGHT NOW. if you wanna add him just go to facebook dot com slash robotunipornattack. i'm going to warn you now, he's an awful person to be friends with. he'll just spam your feed with robot unicorn attack achievements, but i assure you, he's not sorry.

another thing: i went back and edited the first three chapters A TEENSY BIT you won't even be able to tell i edited them, so i'll just tell you right here what i added: craig's a smoker. he was really a smoker this whole entire time, but i just really really kept forgetting to put that in places. he digs those marlboro menthols. don't bother looking for the details, i put it in like two or three places alone. BUT craig felt empty and incomplete without his cigarettes so now i am happy with that. also, i put all the chapter titles in lowercase letters because capitalization has grown on me as ugly. of course, i'll write entire chapters properly, but i made all those dumb lyrics lowercase too. so! there's that.

speaking of chapter titles, the title of this chapter was TOO LONG BY ONE FUCKING CHARACTER. so i just omitted the word "mod" but just remember ffnet is a filthy liar and you know the true title of this chapter.

by the by, i'm dumb and overexcited by things, so i'll probably be making real iphone and facebook screenshots for all their social networking conversations. i've already made one between clyde and kevin, which goes with THIS chapter, so i haven't posted it publicly yet. but if you wanna see some dumb screenshots, as well as notes and photos and whatnot pertaining to this story, go to relationspaceships dot tumblr dot com slash tagged slash houseflies. because i am just such a DORK and i put effort into irl things.

~*enough dawdling*~

okay not enough dawdling. i need to do proper thank yous because i'd be a cuntbasket if i didn't WHICH I DIDN'T, THIS IS AN EDIT. okay so big fat lovely thank you goes out to my bff amanda (a-study-in-kink at tumblr) for basically writing me a template for one of these scenes, like, over a year ago. also maybe also i guess lee (flashgordoninsilverunderwear at tumblr) gets a thank you for actually being kevin in some of these parts. also shout-out to my cheesoids angel (puzzlie at tumblr) and laura (pukingneoneels at tumblr), and also my brother cas (unproductiveairman at tumblr) for drawing pretty pictures and eating mac anc cheese and watching netflix while i selfishly wrote this entire thing on his laptop.

i hope you have as much fun reading this as i had writing it :o) love you guys xoxo

* * *

**v. the rise of the mod vegan artist curtains**

That night, Clyde dreamed he was dead. He dreamed that he was dead and nobody cared. This wasn't the first time alcohol slithered its way into his subconscious, pushing his emotional buttons. Drinking and dreaming was not okay. Friends don't let friends drink and dream.

When he woke up, he felt a trail of dried drool crusting down to the middle of his neck. He was sure he was still dead. _I'm dead. I'm actually dead. I'm over. It's all over. _He rolled over, deciding to deal with his facial crusts later. He was sticky and sweaty, and he could smell his own rancid breath, a mixture of morning and J_ä_germeister, maybe. Or was it tequila? Something fruitier—Sangria? The rest of Tweek's White Russian, perhaps. It couldn't have been all of the above. Maybe it was. He would've done that. He drank the troubles away. He most nearly forgot how badly the stand-up went, but he remembered the fifty dollars.

Eyes still cemented shut, he felt around in his pockets for the fifty. Instead, his fingers got caught in what felt like a rubber band, and a fuzzy piece of cardboard.

That was it. Those were the rest of the smells. A fresh combination of lemons, strawberries, Christmas trees, and what was probably a breed of sexy ocean breeze.

He opened his eyes completely to find that he was still scrunched in the backseat of Tits. He sat up, bumping his head slightly on the door. It hurt. Everything hurt. He felt like his head was screwed on crooked. He caught a glimpse of the floor of the car—dried puke. Lovely. _Carry on Wayward Son _was stuck in his head. He groaned out of pain, and the fear that he would associate that song with the pain.

He slinked out of the car, bones cracking. The morning air was frigid and if Clyde wasn't actually dead when he woke up, he wished he was dead now. Thankfully, the car was parked just across the street from his apartment building.

The air fresheners were still dangling. Some of them fell off when he crossed the street.

He got to the lobby, realized he didn't have any keys, planted his face on the glass panel of the door, and decided to just nap there.

He was so disoriented, he couldn't form words in his head—all he knew was that he _had get in open keys home sleep. _He also needed to _money Craig where comedy fifty ocean lemons._

He felt around the array of doorbells. _Too many apartments, _he articulated in his head. _Where mine._

What the hell was his apartment again? There was a number, and a letter. _goddammitgoddammitgoddammit_

16D. That was it. 16D, he was sure. He pushed that button. Repeatedly. If Craig was asleep, Clyde was reasoning with himself why the floor he was standing on looked comfortable to sleep on.

Loud static came from the little speaker, startling Clyde, but also relieving him.

"Who's it," Craig said.

"S'me," Clyde mumbled at the speaker.

"Who?" Craig said louder.

"S'ME. SSS'ME, CLYDE."

"Oh, shit," Craig said, cut off by the louder sound of the door buzzer. Clyde stumbled through the door, so excited, so happy to be closer to his bed.

Clyde slammed the front door behind him, moaning out loud, "You left me in the car last night, you aaaaaasshole."

However, Craig was not the only person in his home. At the dining table, right across from Craig, sat a chipper, glowingly cheerful Betsy Donovan. They were drinking from white mugs, having a laugh. A goddamn laugh! Clyde wasn't having this.

"Mom, what, oh my God, hi. I—you can't—I'm dead. You can't talk to me, I'm not alive right now, okay. Dead dead dead dead dead. Bye."

Betsy stood up with open arms. "Honey!"

"No, mom, I'm dead. You can't even hug me. I am dead."

Clyde didn't accept the hug, and instead went to the bathroom, because he couldn't stand for his mother to see him like that—covered in drool, puke, eye crust and frilly little fresheners. Why didn't she call? He did have his phone in his back pocket. He forgot to look. Behind the shut bathroom door, he took it out. _13 missed calls, _it chimed at him. Oh.

"Why," he asked himself, as he splashed his face with cold water, running his finger across the drool trail. "Why." He rubbed the crust out of his eyes, the vomit from the corners of his lips. He woke up a monster. It was hard to wash away. He even asked his reflection why. He looked like he just got an extreme makeover from Golgothan and his team of shitnymphs.

Was it safe to leave the bathroom? Now that his mom was here, did he still have a free pass to go back to sleep? Maybe she could rub him to sleep, sing him to sleep, like she used to. But he was a grown-ass man now, and she must have been here for some sort of grown-ass reason, like she needed help with the plumbing in her house or something, because Clyde was just so handy.

He quickly overcame the fear, assuming she just wanted to say hi or something. He left the bathroom, looking just a tad more socially acceptable than before. "Hi, mom," he said, making up the hug.

"Oh, honey!" She embraced him tightly. "Are you okay? Craig said you were feeling sick."

"Mm? Yeah. I'm fine." He shot Craig a look. Just a look. Craig didn't pick up. He sipped his coffee.

"You want tea, honeybun?" Betsy cooed.

"We don't have tea," said Clyde.

"Oh, I brought tea. You want chamomile? Sleepytime? I even brought a whole sampler, so if you want any fruity blend, you got it!"

"Mmhm." Words weren't an option right now. Clyde didn't even pick all the air fresheners off of himself. He started unlooping the ones on his pants. "No thanks, Ma, I need t'sleep."

"It'll make you feel better. I've already started warming up some water." She checked the little red pot on the stove. Clyde took the seat across from Craig. There was a large plastic bag in the middle of the table, filled with—Clyde didn't know. He peeked inside.

"Oh, yes!" Betsy said. "That's what I'm here for, sweetie. The curtains."

"The curtains," Clyde repeated. He tried to sound more interrogative. No such luck.

"These were your nana's curtains," Betsy said, patting the bag. "They're a bit too loud for both of our houses. And since this place is in dire need of color..."

Craig nodded in agreement at the statement.

_Goddammit, no, _Clyde thought, _don't agree with her._

"... I'm passing these down to you!" Betsy chirped. "Craig loves them. They'll look great."

The curtains were sunshine yellow, with scattered rectangles of different colors and sizes. What could they be called—mod vegan artist curtains? Yeah. They weren't vegans, or artists. Mostly not vegans. These curtains did not belong. "Mm. That's nice but. We already have curtains. Just take them back to the sleep." Clyde rested his cheek on his fist. His eyelids felt heavy. "Store," he corrected. "I meant store."

"You mean those god awful grey shutters? Those aren't curtains. They're god awful grey shutters, that's what they are." Betsy carefully poured the hot water into Clyde's Aquaman mug. (Clyde identified with Aquaman, because everyone thought talking to fish would be a useless superpower, but he was actually a pretty swell guy.)

"The shutters are fine," said Clyde.

"What tea did you say you wanted, sweetie?"

"I don't want tea."

"You need some, hon, you look like a goddamn trainwreck. Sleepytime will do you good, you can relax after we see how the curtains look."

_I don't waaaant to see how the curtains look. _Clyde touched the curtains, tried to get connected with them for a split second. Maybe they were the good guys. One second passed and he decided that, no, they weren't.

"Aren't you a little alarmed," Clyde said to his mom, trying to open his eyes all the way, "that Craig left me in the car all night?"

"You looked peaceful," Craig said with another slurp of his beverage.

Betsy soaked the teabag in the mug, stirring lightly. "You're alive, aren't you?" she said.

"No!" Clyde cried. "I am the opposite of alive. I told you. I'm dead. Deady deady dead. I am going to sleep. I am going to go be unconscious and vulnerable for an extended period of time and none of you shall give a shit or two."

Betsy shook her head. "How about you don't _drink_ as much as you did last night?" She rested her soft hand on his perspiring forehead. The wedding ring irritated his skin. "It's entirely trashy and unnecessary." She set the warm mug down on the little coaster that Clyde had borrowed from Outback Steakhouse, swirling the teabag around again. Clyde wanted to tell her that _she _was entirely trashy and unnecessary, because that was a default comeback, but this was his lovely mommy, offering her care, and he wasn't even taking it because he wanted to sleep and the curtains were already ruining his life.

"Now take your tea," Betsy continued, running her red manicured fingers through her son's hair, "and get some sleep. Craig and I will put up the curtains."

Craig's eyebrows jerked upward. He struggled between excitement for spending time with Mrs. Donovan and kind-of sort-of what felt like worry for Clyde's wellbeing. He felt like a parent again. _Maybe I should go tuck him in_, he told himself. _I should. I really should. They don't call me Tucker for nothing. I hope a stray bullet finds my head for saying that._

Craig actually escorted Clyde to bed from there. It wasn't out of affection, he convinced himself. He just wanted to have a private talk with him.

"You're fine, right?" He asked once Clyde was lying down. "I don't have to call any ambulances, do I."

"No. I just need to sleep."

"Drink your tea." Craig gestured to it.

"I'm gonna let it seep more."

"You're gonna fall asleep and it'll be cold and nasty when you wake up."

Clyde leaned up a little and took his hoodie off, tossing it aside. "That's okay."

Craig lifted his hands. Hesitated. His fingers twitched more, but then he just went for it, and blanketed Clyde in the comforter. "I just tucked you in," Craig said. Craig wanted to say, _I call it a Tucker Tuck. They're very special. _But he didn't.

"Why," Clyde murmured.

"I don't know. You look like you need it." Spending time with Mrs. Donovan did this to him. He knew this. He was buttered, softened, and he was handling it the best he could.

"Where's my fifty bucks." The words were barely audible, but Craig's ears were waiting for that question in particular, so he heard it perfectly.

"I spent about half of it on your personal air fresheners. Sorry. The other twenty-five's in the kitchen, in the cookie jar. That's where the funds go now."

"I thought that was where… the cookies go."

"We're out of cookies."

"Oh." Clyde shut his eyes tighter, squeezing the pillow to his face. "I'd rather have cookies than money."

"Cookies aren't going to pay the bills."

"I… hate you." Clyde had to get it out. He was disappointed about the half-spent fifty and the cookie loss. But he wasn't conscious enough to feel all the emotions he could.

"If it makes you feel any better, I hate the fucking curtains," Craig said. "We're putting them up, though. Just to humor your mom." He paused. "I like your mom."

"Iknowyoulikemymom."

"Yeah. She makes good coffee, too."

"Mmm." Clyde felt himself falling into a dark dreamland, but he still felt Craig's presence. "Hey, man…"

"Yeah?"

"Are you gonna be here… when I wake up."

"Yeah, why?"

"'Cause… 'Cause I wanna… carvethepumpkinwithyou. We can carve it. … with our names."

"Yeah. That sounds good. Maybe we can make your mom's lemon bars or something. To make up for the cookies."

"Mhm." There was no more energy left for this. He expected Craig to leave a long time ago. This was too odd—he must have been dreaming. It's happened before. It was the limbo between whatever reality was and whatever it wasn't. Maybe if he asked it nicely, it'd leave. "Please lemme sleep," Clyde said, pulling the covers over his head.

Craig nodded, but after realizing Clyde couldn't see, he said, "Okay." He stood up, and before going to close the shutters, he kneeled at the edge of the bed. "Bro hug?" he tried.

But Clyde was already fast asleep.

* * *

Clyde woke up but he didn't wake up, because he wasn't sure he slept at all. He had dreams, but not dreams he could feel himself in the middle of—just soundless images he could see vaguely in darkness. When he finally craned his eyes open, his room was dark and blurry, but stripes of sunlight seeped through the shutters and rippled over the shapes of his bed. He shut his eyes again, desperate for more rest. He'd never been more relieved that he didn't have to be anywhere.

However, he found motivation to wake up when he remembered he and Craig had a pumpkin-carving date. He squirmed over to look at the clock—the red numbers glowed 5:54. In the _evening? _Of course. The sun was still up. What time was it when he went to bed, like, 11 AM? He wondered how he managed to achieve six and a half hours of nothing. Then he remembered he's achieved nothing in more impressive periods of time.

Maybe Craig left another one of those notes. Something to ruin the rest of Clyde's Friday. _"Dear Loser (CLYDE),"_ it would say, _"I know you think I was being your bro by tucking you into bed. But HAHA JOKE'S ON YOU! Because I pissed in your bed too. I am the Piss King."_

Clyde searched his nightstand for the predicted note, but no such thing existed. He smelled his sheets—nope, fresh linen. Perhaps he was underestimating Craig's bro-like qualities. Maybe Craig's heart grew three sizes that day.

When he finally got out of bed, and dragged himself about the apartment, he learned that it hadn't.

"Craig?" Clyde called, as if Craig were a munchkin hiding in a bush. There was rustling, though. The sounds of a hyper Fajita. "Hey, girl," Clyde said to her. She had a proper cage now. That was Craig's doing. Clyde didn't remember how or when.

He brought a leaf of lettuce from the kitchen for her to poke at. "Have you seen Craig?" he asked her. She nibbled. "No? Oh, he's a big fat meanie, isn't he?" Clyde decided that she was agreeing. However, Fajita was grateful for her new home. "At least you don't have to pay rent," Clyde said. "You just sit there looking cute." Fajita agreed with that, too. "No, but seriously, where the fuck is Craig." Fajita did not know. "You are good for nothing," he said, pushing the rest of the lettuce into her cage.

Very soon, Clyde found himself on Facebook again. He made a status.

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__i still have a hangover but at least my bunny is here for me_

Very soon following that, Clyde found himself masturbating. It was to very standard, boring, stone-faced lesbian pornography.

Oh.

Very soon following his wank session, he found himself staring extremely intently at the relationship status options on Facebook. He wondered what Bebe would've wanted him to put. Would the wrong choice put a dent in his sex life? That happened to Stan Marsh. He didn't want to be Stan Marsh. No one wanted to be Stan Marsh.

_Select Relation:  
Single  
In a relationship  
Engaged  
Married  
It's complicated_

Good thinking, Facebook. Clyde thought that last one was a very good answer for those who were confused. But he kept reading on.

_Widowed_

Everything up until 'widowed,' Clyde decided, was the sequence of a story. After marriage, things become complicated. Then you get widowed? He just read a Nicholas Sparks novel in nine words. He thought Facebook was considerate for saving him the time.

_Separated_

Separated? Aren't we all separated, one way or another? This was getting too deep for him.

_Divorced  
In a civil union  
In a domestic partnership_

Well, he and Bebe definitely didn't apply to anything at the end of the arc. How can you get widowed, then separated, then divorced, then going from that to being in a civil union, _then_ in a domestic partnership? Facebook knew the cruelness and complications of being in love.

Complications.

That was the king relationship status. _It's complicated. _Yes, of course, why didn't he see it before? It was vague enough for people to assume he had a sex life, but not wrong enough for Bebe to get angry. That was it. He had won.

_**Clyde Donovan **__went from being "single" to "it's complicated."_

That took care of that, and if Bebe had anything to say about it, how could Clyde be wrong? Was it _not_ complicated? The clever trick, Clyde had discovered, is that there is no such option as "it's simple," because relationships are by no means simple, and therefore the "it's complicated" option was the most standard and universal choice. If there was an "it's simple" option, and his significant other chose that option, oh, boy, would Clyde be furious. His feelings would not be resorted to simplicity. Clyde was a complex man. If Craig was there, he would have agreed.

Where the fuck is Craig.

It was a good thing Clyde had his trusty cell phone, or else he would've never been able to send Craig the following text.

_**To: Craig  
**__**6:56 PM  
**__dude where are you? we have pumpkins to bake and lemon bars to carve_

Clyde sat down next to Fajita's cage. "Let's wait for Craig together," he said to her. The lettuce was totally gone. He was impressed. "What's so special about lettuce, anyway? It is a tasteless leaf." He held the phone up to the cage, so she could see if Craig was about to reply, too. "Sometimes I forget you're a rabbit. Lettuce must be the best fucking thing you know. Like me and cheeseburgers."

Cheeseburgers.

He decided to send Craig another text.

_**To: Craig  
**__**6:58 PM  
**__oh yeah if you're with your cheeseburger then fuck you. i'm more important than him, i'm mroe than a cheeseburger i am like a steak. i am a steak marinated in a thick coat of bromance. and also pumpkin carvings and lemon bar recipes. COME TO ME_

"Do you think he's ignoring me?" He asked Fajita. "If anything, I should be ignoring him. He spent my hard-earned money on air fresheners. He's really pretty selfish and thinks that everything he does for himself is for _my _good." He put the phone on the floor. Fajita was facing the wall now, but he still spoke. "But he's just digging our shithole deeper than it already is. It's like he's trying to get to China or something. Doesn't he know he can't actually dig to China?" He looked away from Fajita to look at the pumpkin sitting on the kitchen counter. The carving kit was right next to it, half-opened. "But he's making it seem so easy, like China's right around the corner by now. I mean, I don't know what to fucking do." He paused, letting air pass through his nose. He picked up his phone and fidgeted with it, mindlessly looking at his own sent texts to remember what he last said. "And he tends to shut people out, so his life is essentially pretty empty, so his hobbies basically include bringing me down, milking his own self-pride out of me because he values himself so little. I bet that's why he keeps me around." Fajita hopped to the opposite side of the cage. Perhaps this information alarmed her. "He still puts up with me, though. And he does do things for me, I guess. He made me pizza and killed that cockroach. And he lets me have drinks free at 57's. But he did piss in my shoes. Does he know how difficult it is, being his friend?" He sat up on his knees, to get a closer look at the twitching rabbit. "He let me keep you, for crying out loud! You're a wild animal." He his eyes widened. "Shit, did we even wash you?"

The facts were these: While Clyde was having sex with Bebe one day prior, at approximately 3:58 in the afternoon, Craig had spent forty-nine dollars and eighty-four cents on a proper cage for Fajita. Then, after setting up the cage, at 4:49, he managed to hold Fajita in such a fashion that she did not gratuitously scratch him, in order to bring her to the sink for a thorough shampooing.

Clyde knew none of this. However, his wonderment entitled him to a brand new excuse to text Craig.

_**To: Craig  
**__**7:07 PM  
**__hey just wondering if you ever gave fajita a bath? add that to our to-do list. still waitin on yuo for the pmupkin and lemon bars. plz text back_

Craig was dead. That was it. That was all there was to it. Craig was either dead or ignoring him, and even if Craig was dead, he must have been ignoring him in the afterlife. They both knew that if either of them died, they'd haunt this apartment. Craig had just died and he didn't even have the decency to haunt Clyde right away. Clyde was offended. Sure, the check-in desk in hell might have had a long line, but not long enough to have left Clyde in such a suspense that he had to start carving the pumpkin without Craig.

Pumpkin carving was not as easy as television made it look. First, he had to open the top. Clyde knew he was not cut out for brain surgery, so this was especially nervewracking. Once the top was off, he put it on his head. Turning around to smile at Fajita, it fell off, leaving orange little particles in his hair.

Clyde stumbled upon a problem when his hand got stuck in the pumpkin.

While it was stuck, he tried to gather as many seeds as he could, but he couldn't even move his fingers. He wondered if this was an okay reason to call 911. Fantasies crossed his mind, fantasies of a dark future where he lives the rest of his life with rotten pumpkins for hands. Clyde Pumpkinhands, they'd call him. He'd get Tim Burton to direct the movie, and, to shake things up a little, he'd get Johnny Depp to play the lead.

"What's that?" Clyde asked the imaginary Craig. "You think I'm a dumbass for making the hole too small? Good one. Oh, you have another one? This isn't the first time I've had my hand awkwardly stuck in a slimy hole? You're full of them, Tucker, full of them."

Imaginary Craig laughed at his own jokes.

Clyde buttered his hand. He couldn't get past the thick rim of the hole, so he tried repeatedly penetrating it, hoping the buttery lubricant would seep downward. Then, miraculously, his hand popped from the hole, doused in seeded orange goop.

He classified that as a near-death experience.

The sink drain was caked with pumpkin residue. The pumpkin wasn't entire clean on the inside, but Clyde decided he wasn't strong enough to take on the rest of the pumpkin's innards. He just wanted to stab it.

So he did, very soon realizing he was nowhere near the pumpkin-carving connoisseur. The pumpkin was actually too small to fit both their names on one side, if the letters were large and clear and bubbly. Clyde did not know how to carve such art. He did, more or less, simply engrave his and Craig's names into the pumpkin, thinly and illegibly. It resembled that of a couple's names carved in tree bark. But this was _better_, Clyde told himself. Bromance won over romance, in most if not all respects. Bromance didn't come with the extra baggage that romance did_—_thinking about it, why wasn't bromance a relationship option on Facebook? Was it too precious an idea for the likes of the Internet? Too precious to be resorted to a measly little option? If it was so precious, why wasn't Craig here right now?

Clyde flipped his laptop open again.

With his webcam, he took a picture of the finished pumpkin. He posted it to his own Facebook wall with the caption, "craig is missing, but i still carved this pumpkin for him. if you find him, i am offering a 1, maybe 2 poptart reward."

Admiring his own post, he noticed something. The pumpkin did not read, "CLYDE & CRAIG," but instead it read, "CLYDE & CRIAG."

Maybe the webcam just messed it up.

He looked at the real one. He'd written "CRIAG."

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked the air, though he hoped the question made it through to both Fajita and Imaginary Craig.

Then, a sound of acknowledgement came from his laptop, startling him.

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Who's Criag?_

Clyde squinted at his computer. This fucking Kevin guy.

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__my best bro_

Facebook was kind enough to let Clyde know that Kevin was typing. Finally, he was not alone.

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Well, if he were, you might have spelled his name right._

Clyde huffed at the screen. Way to salt the wound.

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__well, if he were, he would be here right now and he couldve carved his own name right_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Where is he?_

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__idk_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__You called him?_

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__he totes hates getting called  
i texted him a few times tho  
idk man he said he would be here_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__You're really attached to him, huh?_

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__hell nah i aint gay  
its just that he said we were gonna make lemon bras  
i dont want to do it without him  
well shit i already did the pumpkin  
ugh why did i do that  
why did i do anything  
maybe I should just go back to sleep  
fuck  
fuck  
fuck  
fuck  
uck  
FUCK_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Well, I'm sorry, dude._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__wanna come over and play xbox or something_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__I'm not going to be your rebound. Criag will be back soon, I promise._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__are you sure_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__No.  
But I do know he wouldn't avoid carving pumpkins and making lemon bars with you.  
He's not a monster._

It dawned on Clyde that Kevin really, really didn't know Craig.

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__yes he is  
and so am i  
that's why we're friends_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__I highly doubt that. Everything'll be okay._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__why are you like so nice_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Why are you like, so dependent? Do you always get like this when he leaves?_

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__no  
i just  
fcuk  
fuck  
i have these dumb dreams ok  
the dream i just had was like  
i was aquaman in my dream  
and no one liked me  
because all i could do was talk to fish  
and i was just a shitty superhero_

This was an old dream, but the old over-soaked tea on his nightstand reminded him of the recurring Aquaman dreams.

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Are you stupid?_

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__it's been suggested_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Aquaman can do EVERYTHING._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__what_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Dude, Aquaman does more than talk to fish. He has infravision, he can hurl bolts of hard water. He's basically the king of the sea._

Clyde looked up Aquaman on Wikipedia—this kid wasn't lying.

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__what are you serious  
why  
why didn't anyone tell me this  
didnt he just go around fetching dunkin donuts for the justice league_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__No, he was too busy kicking ass._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__so whjy isn't HE the leader of hte justice league if he is just so super  
all this time i felt like i was appreciating an underdog and comparing myself to this poor guy  
and you're telling me he's the king of the fuckin sea_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__How did you not know this? His alias is "King of the Seven Seas"._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__but  
but ugh  
i need another superhero to compare myself too  
do you know anyone else worthless and pathetic_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__Worthless and pathetic superheroes? No._

_**Clyde Donovan  
**__oh  
well okay kev  
thanks_

_**Kevin Stoley  
**__You're welcome._

Clyde did not like that answer, so he closed the Facebook tab. He knew he'd open it again soon, eager to see the feedback on his pumpkin picture. But he did not want to be associated with pompous know-it-alls whose names started with 'K' and ended with 'evin'.

He called Craig. Once. It went straight to voicemail.

"Hey, dude. Sorry for calling. Where _are _you?"

* * *

For the first time in a long time, Tits did not smell like a dumpster. The carpets had been shampooed, washing away any last coffee stain, cigarette ash, and the fumes they clouded her with. The Marlboro packs, the White Castle boxes, the Dunkin' Donuts baggies, all history. She smelled lemon fresh, and sported a few air fresheners of her own—one of which was shaped like a dolphin. Craig didn't adore dolphins. He just thought that a dolphin dangling from the rear view mirror was kind of hilarious.

He'd gotten the cheapest cleaning job he could afford, but he was satisfied with it. He'd forgotten what the backseat looked like.

Getting ready to take his leave from the gas station, he checked his phone. The screen was dim. Briefly showed him an empty battery. He put it down in the cup holder, letting it die. Well, fuck. He hoped he wasn't needed. He did wonder, though, if Clyde had already woken up and if he was feeling okay, if perhaps he had to vomit again, and if he made it to the bathroom in time. Did Clyde even have any more alcohol to upchuck? The backseat carpets had been thick with Clyde's puke. Maybe that was all of it. Maybe it wasn't. Craig didn't know for sure. It was time for him to head home to find out, but he still took Clyde into consideration. He'd pick up a burrito for him, from Taco Bell. Craig wanted a chicken quesadilla for himself as well. Maybe a large Baja Blast. He deserved it—he got the car cleaned, after all.

Craig tapped the heel of his hand the steering wheel, silently apologizing to the new lemony air. He held a lit cigarette between his fingers, smoke dancing with his erratic taps.

It began to drizzle, again. The roads shone with the rain, and were quickly obscured by falling droplets, splattering across the windshield. Craig turned on the wipers with an irritant flick. The rain quickly got heavier, and he set the wipers to go faster, faster, passing by with annoying squeaks.

A tune was playing on the radio that sounded very distantly familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. Had to be 70's pop.

_(here in my car  
i feel safest of all  
i can lock all my doors  
it's the only way to live  
in cars.)_

Craig turned the volume up a bit. It was kind of catchy, actually. He bobbed his head as he turned up a narrow street. It was only one lane, with only a few cars parked here and there. Few fast food joints glowed up ahead, the Taco Bell in particular.

(_here in my car  
i can only receive  
i can listen to you  
it keeps me stable for days  
in cars.)_

And then he was violently wrenched from his reverie, for several things happened all at once, very quickly. Maybe even in a blur, or slow-motion, but he couldn't tell. First, he saw some guy running, in a panic, after a shadow. A black shape darted forward and the guy lurched, yelling after it. The shape scrambled into the street—right in front of the car—

Tires were screeching—there was a jumble of hoarse swears, and the horrifying sound of metal being twisted and warped, and a sickening crunch. Somewhere, a dog barked loudly and Craig swore he could hear someone call his name. He blinked, trying to keep his eyes open, but something warm was trickling onto his face and he didn't think it was rain.

He was looking into a pillow of marshmallows—no, that was an airbag. He was in a car. Or, what was left of one. Seething, he lifted his head—and immediately wished he hadn't. The world spun through spider-cracked glass, and there was an incessant ringing in his ears.

_Breathe_, he told himself. Damage control. He tried to shift, but was immobilized. Glancing down, he saw his arm, kind of. Patches of pale skin and blood, pinned against his body. His left arm was crunched between the steering wheel and the caved-in door, broken like a snapped chopstick. He coughed, world spinning.

Someone was calling his name, but that couldn't be right. His eyelids were falling, slowly—the last things he saw glowing in the darkness were the numbers 7:07. He let his eyes close, shielding his world in a hood of darkness.

_(here in my car  
i know i've started to think  
about leaving tonight  
although nothing seems right  
in cars.)_

* * *

Clyde wondered why his fleshlight had been so expensive—but it all made sense now. It _was _a bad idea to set his Amazon account to Japanese. Clyde did not speak or read or know the slightest smidgen of the language. He didn't know enough to find the settings page again to set it back to English. Entering "fleshlight" in Google Translate did not go over well in Japanese, so he tried different combinations of words that applied to fleshlight, like "fleshy masturbation toy" and "electric sex toy." When he did this, about a week prior to this day, he had entered the clearest translation he found in the Amazon search box. This was a very reasonable explanation as to why he did not order a masturbation toy to begin with, but instead, what had come in the mail was a Razor E200 Electric Scooter. In lime green.

It arrived in the mail that night. He didn't know what to do with it, but the conclusion to sell it came very quickly. What had also come very quickly was an alarming call from Craig's mother.

From the other line, Clyde heard hysterical crying and rapid breaths. Then words. "My—my stupid fucking son is in the hospital, where are you?"

That was too many words at once.

Clyde's palms became sweaty, struggling to hold the phone in place. "What—what? Where am _I? _Your stupid fucking—what is in the _what?"_

"Craig! The car crashed and—where were _you?"_

What was Clyde supposed to do—express worry for Craig, or come up with an excuse about where he was instead of saving Craig's life? He shook, voice trembling. "I—I've been home, sleeping and—what? What _happened?_" Clyde should have trusted himself when he thought Craig was dead. He really was. This was happening and his thoughts were traveling too fast for him to keep up, if Craig was actually dead, would he be able to continue doing—_anything? _

"They say a—they say a dog ran in front of the car. The roads were slippery and he swerved—"

Clyde's eyes got misty.

"—and the car hit a thing… like, the fucking Taco Bell sign or something—"

Clyde gasped. _That _too? He wanted to know more about what happened to Craig, if he was going to be fucking okay and if Clyde had to start screaming and crying, but nervously, he blurted, "Is Taco Bell okay?"

"_What?_" Mrs. Tucker screeched. "I—well, it took the fire department a lot of time to—" She sniffled, "to pry him out of the car. His arm was crushed… we haven't really, gotten any further information—"

"Is he going to be _okay?" _Clyde shouted.

"We don't know," Mrs. Tucker said. "Just get yourself to the hospital. Please."

"Okay. Okay," Clyde said. "See you there."

Mrs. Tucker shortly uttered a goodbye. Clyde hung up, wiping a tear from his cheek. He grabbed a chunk of lettuce from the kitchen, and dropped it in Fajita's cage.

"Hey," he said to her, "Daddy's gotta go. Craig's in trouble." He sniffled. "You be good, okay?"

She picked at the lettuce. He took that as a "Yes, goodbye, Godspeed."

Clyde didn't have a car. That was his first revelation. His second revelation was that, what he did have, was a brand new lime green Razor E200 Electric Scooter.

And he was on his way.


End file.
